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alt title(s): Term Confusion; You Fail Semantics Forever Professor Hogben... is unwilling to look 'egregious' up in the dictionary and see what it means.
Hacker: What does "egregious" mean?
Humphrey: Um, I think it means outstanding. ... In one way or another.
—The Death List, Yes Minister
Language evolves. Over time, as people speak a language, some of its words take on new meanings, and the old meanings may fall into disuse. Sometimes the new usages become mainstream; when was the last time you heard someone (who wasn't trying to be funny - likely failing) use " gay" to mean anything other than "homosexual" or an insult? Sometimes, things are more... contentious.
This trope covers those words that writers, and indeed people in general, are frequently accused of misusing, although given the continual evolution of any spoken language, exactly what constitutes a "misuse" is hotly contested. The most common examples can be sorted into categories of varying pedantry. The more pedantic ones may rely on obscure usages (the domain of a Troll) or represent a vain attempt by linguistic purists to turn back the clock on the evolution of language (often accompanied by the belief that linguistic evolution is always "degradation"). Or they may simply be so widespread that, while the "correct" usage is still valuable in some contexts, one can generally get away with the "incorrect" colloquial usage. The less pedantic ones, though, will probably elicit eye rolls at least from most people with an interest in language or a university education. And then there are some words that are just so specific that nobody actually bothers to look up what they really mean. This happens most often to scientific or medical terms.
In some rare cases, the opposite may happen: a shorter word may be replaced by a longer one, either coined or borrowed, because the writer thinks a longer word makes his character (or himself) seem more intelligent. See "irregardless" below for an example of pompous writers trying to create a word, and "titular" for an example of pompous writers misusing a word to the point that it's lost its original meaning.
This isn't a general style guide; these are specifically words that have commonly contested usages. Homophones, humorous misspellings and bizarre malapropisms belong in The Big List Of Booboos And Blunders or Rouge Angles Of Satin.
Examples:
Very Pedantic (most won't notice, few who notice will care)
- The distinction between sex and gender is lost on most people. The sexes (male and female) are the two divisions in which many organisms are placed, based upon their reproductive role. The genders (masculine and feminine) refer to social characteristics (such as behavioral norms) associated with males and females, respectively. To illustrate: facial hair is a male characteristic, while courage is a masculine characteristic in many cultures.
- BUT it depends on who you ask. When somebody is talking about Transexual/Transgendered people in a "LGBT" society, it is considered appropriate to seperate these, as a physiological male could have female gender traits or vice versa. However, outside the reference of LGBT people, it is extremely pedantic to jump on this. Use at own risk.
- Technically, the "universe" is the totality of everything that exists. If two "universes" are capable of interacting with one another, they're (strictly speaking) part of the same universe. This one is extremely pedantic, particularly if you have a Multiverse. Turns out 'Universe' is for the entirety of everything, and 'universe' is for the big balls of space and time.
- A "dimension" is technically just a set of directions, of which we have three in space (up/down, left/right, and forward/back, relative to the observer) and one in time (future/past). However, the word is commonly used to refer to an Alternate Universe, in the sense of a place where the physical laws are entirely different from those in a place you could reach by traveling along another spatial dimension. See also: Another Dimension. This is only very slightly less pedantic than "universe".
- "Sentient" and "sapient" are often confused. A sentient being is one that is "self-aware" or "conscious", capable of subjective experience. A sapient being, on the other hand, is capable of "intelligence" or "judgment". Generally, these occur together, but it's possible for a being to be sentient without being sapient (many argue that this is true of non-human animals), or even sapient without being sentient. Sapience without sentience is rarer: the example given by That Other Wiki is the Tandu from David Brin's "Uplift" stories, who are capable of designing and using technology but regard other species basically as prey. Most people just understand both of these to mean "pretty much human-like". The Watchmakers of the Moties from Niven's The Mote in God's Eye are capable of building technology, but they don't appear to have any kind of self awareness, making them a great example of a species that is sapient without being sentient. It gets complicated because various scientific disciplines are still arguing over what defines both sentience and sapience. On a literal level, sentient means "capable of sensing", which is used biologically to describe living things that process sensory information (such as mammals, birds, lizards, and such) as opposed to pure stimulus-response reactions (such as plants that turn to face the sun or bacteria that retreat from acidic conditions).
- Speaking of which, the Latin word sapiens (literally, "sapient"), as in Homo sapiens, is a singular adjective (its plural is sapientes), but often mangled as "sapien", which is not a word.
- Also, the technical complete definition of humanity in genus/species/subspecies talk is Homo Sapiens Sapiens, to differentiate us from Homo Sapiens Idaltu, among others. No one cares.
- To be even more extremely technical, "sapiens" should not be capitalized.
- A "democracy", in the classical Athenian sense, is a government in which all matters of state are debated publicly and decided by a vote of all citizens (in other words, they didn't have candidates like now which the people voted for and then the candidates voted in made the decisions) rather than the sort of representative republic that's commonly called by the term today. In modern terms, the former style of government is typically called "direct democracy." This brings us to...
- "Republic," which refers to any nation whose head of state is not a hereditary monarch, regardless of whether that state's political system is representative. The astute troper will note that in fiction as in real life, many nations which are outright dictatorships make use of this technicality in the name of their state.
- "Tyrant" in the original, ancient Greek meaning, was a single person who ruled over a city. It was a value-neutral term, not a pejorative for an evil or oppressive ruler. Many ancient Greek tyrants were actually very well-liked. Originally Tyranny was indeed value-neutral, merely indicating a monarchy that was not necessarily hereditary. However once Athens (were most of our sources come from) overthrew its tyrant and became fervently democratic the word took on its current meaning.
- This dichotomy between ancient and modern usage of the word is played merry hell with in Pyramids and Small Gods, which contain a pastiche of Ancient Greece.
- The words "racism," "prejudice," and "steroptype," are often confused. Racism is the belief that one race is inherently superior to another, whereas prejudice means the belief that "a group of people [are] characterized by their race, social class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, disability or religion.
 " Sterotypes, on the other hand, are "generalizations of existing characteristics that reduce complexity" (also copied from The Other Wiki). So, the belief of Southern slave-owners that the african-americans were an inferior race was racism, the belief of English settlers that the natives were savages was prejudice, and the belief of some Americans that all Canadians say "Eh" is a stereotype.
- This troper has always been darkly amused by how often people decry "racism" when they mean "discriminatory behavior." Particularly when the subject is an inanimate object or concept possessing the characteristic, i.e. "Police profiling is racist." Association fallacy is a wonderful thing.
- Technically, the term bishonen is only supposed to refer to androgynously attractive underaged (specifically, under eighteen) males, with biseinin addressing of-age examples. Of course, outside Japan, very few care about those semantics.
- Does that mean that an adult Bishoujo is a bijosei?
- The word "akimbo" means bowed or bent, and is most often used when referring to someone with his arms bent and hands resting on his hips. Perhaps because this pose is often used by two-pistoled gunfighters in media, the word is sometimes mistakenly applied to any situation in which someone has a matched pair of weapons in his hands. The names of the tropes Guns Akimbo and Swords Akimbo feature this mistake. A noted example of the correct meaning is a one-time Freakazoid villain named Arms Akimbo, who's arms are permanently stuck in place, hands on his hips.
- A "satellite" is any object placed in orbit around a larger body of mass, such as a planet. Most people think of satellites as the man-made pieces of technology that detect weather and spy on the Russians, but any natural chunk of space rock can be called a satellite. Moons of course count too. Many people refer to their satellite dishes as simply "the satellite," leading some people to confuse the meaning of the word. Which is why we now have the distinction of "natural satellite" and "artificial satellite".
- Ghettos were originally an isolated neighborhood into which the Jews of the city were forced to live. (If you're interested: The name comes from a part of Venice where the Jews were forced to live, and apparently isn't older than 1516.) It has expanded to mean any slum that is dominated by a single ethnic group. With the arrival of hip-hop, the term is almost exclusively used to refer to poor black neighborhoods.
- An "oxymoron" is not simply any contradiction in terms, it must be deliberately done for rhetorical effect. Thus, "a deafening silence" is an oxymoron, whereas "mature student" is not.
- An oxymoron is also two, or at most three words long. Anything longer than that is usually a sentence, and therefore a paradox.
- You Fail Maritime Tradition Forever:
- Never use the pronoun "it" when referring to a ship in English. Ships are women, not things, and need to be addressed as such!
- In German, things get a bit more complicated. While the female article and pronoun are traditionally used when referring to a ship by name alone, the terms for some classes of ships are technically male or neutral. Thus, when a ship is referred to by both class and name in conjunction, it can appear to change gender. This does not appear to bother the Germans in the slightest. This happens with other vehicles in German; das Auto is gender-neutral, der Wagen and specific model names take masculine pronouns, and body types are all over the place. With cars, it gets even more complicated: While a car referred to by the name of its manufacturer is always male (der Volvo), cars referred to by their model name are only male most of the time. A select few are female, mostly either feminine looking sports cars (die Corvette) or weird-looking classics (die Isetta).
- You also insult a ship when you call her a boat. Rule of thumb: if the vessel has multiple decks and carries her own boats, she's probably a ship.
- The Malloreon has a lot of fun with this one.
- Pretty much anything that happens around water and has an author who wants to shows the work they invested will point the above out.
- On the other hand, QI suggests that the naval tradition is that all ships float on the water and all boats are submarines. So you just can't win...
- Submarines are still known as boats despite their modern size because the original term used for them was "submarine boats".
- The nautical term for speed is "knots". Not "knots per hour". "Knots" means, literally, nautical miles per hour.
- It's also worth noting that the name of a ship or boat should always be italicised.
- A few mental health ones:
- Psychotic does not mean "going around and killing people for no reason"; someone who does that is homicidal. Psychosis is a loss of touch with reality, characterized by disorganised thinking, delusions, and sometimes (but not always) audial, visual, and tactile hallucinations. While people with psychosis are occasionally also homicidal, it is extremely rare.
- Psychopaths and sociopaths are usually not murderers; in fact, many successful CEOs, lawyers, and politicians are psychopaths or sociopaths. Psychopathy and sociopathy both refer to the absence of a conscience, a limited emotional range, and difficulty in forming significant relationships. They also often lack impulse control. Psychopaths are born with these traits, through some as-yet unclear difference in the frontal lobe; sociopaths are usually formed through neglect or abuse in early childhood. Both psychopaths and sociopaths can be classed as having antisocial personality disorder, though not all people with the disorder are psychopaths or sociopaths. While statistically speaking murderers are likely to be psychopaths or sociopaths, psychopaths and sociopaths are not very likely to be murderers.
- Not true, strictly speaking. Psychopathy and sociopathy are typically held to be synonyms under the umbrella of antisocial personality disorder (which is the term the DSM-IV uses that includes psychopaths and sociopaths), and when a distinction is made it has nothing to do with the origins of the disorder, since the origins are not definitely known. The typical distinction is that sociopaths have a more normal temperament and are better able to adapt to societal norms.
- Symptoms of schizophrenia include psychosis. It definitely does not include multiple personalities. Multiple personalities are a form of dissociation known as dissociative identity disorder. It is yet to be discovered in a patient outside of the United States and as such its credibility as an actual diagnosis is hotly debated; the vast majority of psychologists do not believe in it and think most of the people who claim to have it are faking it, or suffer from different disorders that have been diagnosed. In addition, one of the major prerequisites is that the seperate personalities are not aware of each other—something that is often overlooked in both real life and the media.
- A pedophile is someone obsessed with thoughts about sex acts involving prepubescent children. Someone who is primarily attracted to adults and has sex with prepubescent children is not a pedophile, and sex with teenagers is definitely not pedophile behavior. The vast majority of pedophiles do not molest children; the most danger of sexual abuse in children comes from the child's own family and friendly authority figures (doctors, priests, teachers, etc.) molest.
- Jealousy is actually a defensive emotion that results from the insecurity that something already in your possession is about to be taken away. Most people today simply use it as a synonym of envy, which is desiring something you don't have.
- Which is why the cardinal sin (you know, what the homunculi are named after) is called Envy, not Jealousy. However, taken out of its initial concept, it can be twisted to have the same meaning as jealousy or the meaning of either, depending on the circumstances.
- We do still use "jealous" in its original meaning when talking about relationships. A jealous lover isn't someone who wants somebody who's "taken," but someone who's possessive of their current partner and paranoid about losing him/her.
- This is also the answer to a common misnomer about the God of the Christian Bible, who is described as a "jealous God", leading some people to point out the seeming contradiction in His perfect and holy characterization. When understood in the proper context, the Bible is really saying that God doesn't want to lose the respect and admiration that he rightfully already possesses as creator and master of, well, everything, not that he's prone to a negative human emotion of greed or envy.
- When people hear the word "nimrod," they may think of a fool or lunkhead, but the word actually comes from a powerful figure in The Bible and Mesopotamian mythology. Nimrod was such a great hunter that his name became synonymous with hunters (The RAF even named a reconnaisance plane after him). However, when a popular Looney Tunes short featured Bugs Bunny calling Elmer Fudd a "poor little Nimrod," kids assumed that the word was an insult, and the interpretation stuck.
- Transpire formerly meant "breathe." It has a legitimate second meaning, "to become known". It is now used to mean "happen," but some people react quite strongly to that usage.
- Matinee means "that which takes up the space of the morning". The current meaning (an event in the afternoon) was an ironic one used by high society as a way of referring to how they always woke up late. This is obscure enough that it can be used to shut up most pedants.
- "Item" is Latin for "as well as" the fact that it ended up preceeding each object in a list gave it its modern usage.
- "Object" and "subject" are opposites.
- When it comes to intelligence tests, people use expressions such as "measuring IQ". But that's a bit like saying that you're measuring the miles per hour of a car. You're not measuring its miles per hour, you're measuring its speed, and miles per hour is simply the unit. Likewise, IQ is a unit used to measure a person's g-factor, the theoretical construct for intelligence.
- The word "willy-nilly", universally understood today to mean "haphazardly" or "arbitrarily", originated as a contraction for "will ye or nill ye", roughly meaning "whether you like it or not".
- In order for something to be "subliminal" it must be undetectable by less that 50% of those present with the stimulus, thus something that half of people miss is technically still subliminal.
Moderately Pedantic (largely dependent on context and/or contested)
- Pompous, sesquipedalian writers have changed the meaning of the word "titular" to mean "title", as in "titular character" for "title character". But "titular" originally meant "holds the title in name only", as in a titular ruler whose name is on the throne but who has no real power or a titular bishop whose see is located in partibus infidelium. Since there is no other word in the English language that conveys the exact meaning of the original "titular", the language has lost a useful word because writers thought "titular" sounded more impressive than the perfectly good word "title" (or "eponymous").
- At least we still have "nominal".
- This has gotten to the point where "titular" can only be used sensibly to mean "eponymous"; using it in any other context, even its original meaning, will get you an eyebrow raise. Too bad, so sad, that's how language works, Get Over It. This should probably be put in the "Very Pedantic" section above.
- "Race", "species", "phylum" and basically everything else from Taxonomic Term Confusion. Using "race" when you mean "species" is often forgivable in fantasy settings; even in Real Life, we have expressions like "the human race." Using "phylum" when you mean "taxon" is more of a Wall Banger.
- Historically, the word "race" has been used to mean anything from all humanity to a single family line. In Barry Lyndon, the title character at one point laments that it was not destined that he should leave any of "my race" on Earth after his death — meaning, not humans, nor white people, nor Irish people, but people of the Barry family. On Wikipedia, one old map depicts "Races of the Austro-Hungarian Empire" — meaning, nationalities, or ethnocultural groups with a common language — Germans, Hungarians, Ukrainians, etc.; all of them would have been more or less the same colour.
- In sociology, "race" refers to any group of people identified by specific physical traits (as opposed to "ethnicity," which goes by cultural traits). In that context, it's accurate referring to all of humanity, especially in a fantasy setting where it refers to different human-like species.
- The fact that it's been tens of thousands of years since there were any other humanoid species around has affected the development of our language: we've never needed a word that means "Being other than Homo sapiens with a similar level of intelligence and comparable social behavior." The closest word we have for that is "human" — anthropologists often use the term to refer to our now-extinct close relatives.
- "Gene" is often used to mean "allele." An allele is one of multiple forms a gene assumes. For example, there is no human gene for brown hair; there's a gene for hair color in general, and one of its alleles codes for brown hair. A valuable distinction for biologists, but not one that most people care about when they're at the movies.
- "Decimate" come from the Latin decimare, which means "to take a tenth part of something." Decimation was the Roman practice of executing one of every ten men in a rebellious or cowardly legion . However, it is used by many people to mean "massacre", or "devastate."
- A "lie detector" doesn't actually detect lies (a Lie Detector does, but those are fictional). It's correctly termed a "polygraph", and while polygraphs can be useful to determine whether someone is nervous, they're far from fool-proof; while they're commonly thought of as "lie detectors", some people will get upset with you for using this.
- To paraphrase Scott Adams, they can't be used in court, so either the justice system is depriving itself of a perfect lie detection method, or....
- In 2003, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences found that the polygraph was "slightly greater" than just flipping a coin in determining if someone was lying.
- "Prodigal" means "wasteful", not "wandering" or "long-lost." The Prodigal Son was the one who squandered his money; the wandering-and-returning happened in the process of his doing so. However, because of this parable, the word is very frequently understood to mean "lost".
- Some use it as an adjective form of prodigy, the two words do look like they are related (the proper word for this usage is "prodigious").
- To draw from another Biblical parable, a "Good Samaritan" is someone who helps even those that persecute him (as Samaritans were an ethnoreligious group who were at the time regularly looked down upon by the Jewish people). However, thanks to a lack of context, many people just think that the term just describes someone who does good deeds.
- "Anarchy" literally means "no government" or "without rule." "Anarchists" support the idea of a condition in which there is no government, but also no conflict or war because the people are devoted to helping each other, and can also not go to war because there is no government to declare it. However, the word anarchy has come to mean the opposite: a state of violent chaos due to a lack of central authority. The word "anarchist" can be used to mean a terrorist or sower of discord, a perception influenced by a rash of terrorist acts and assassinations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
- "UFO" stands for Unidentified Flying Object, meaning that there's something moving in the sky, but you're not sure what it is. If it's obvious that said object is an extraterrestrial spacecraft, then it has been identified and no longer qualifies as such.
- Unless you know who built it, it's still unknown. Until you meet the occupants and make contact, it's a UFO just as much as a new Russian aircraft that nobody has ever seen before. More annoying is the fact that some people treat the term "UFO" or more generally "unknown object" as inherently alien — "You can't identify it? That means it's a spaceship!" The same logic would mean that whatever is digging in your garbage is automatically a dragon unless you can clearly see that it's not. If you're not sure if its a 747-200D or 747-400F, its technically unidentified, right?
- "UFO" has the connotation of being a specifically shaped spaceship. The stereotypical alien spaceship is circular, bulges outwards, and has a green glass dome on top.
- This design is called a "Flying Saucer" for those Sci-Fi writers who want to be specific.
- When U.S. presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich admitted to seeing a UFO, some news outlets reported that he said he saw alien spacecraft.
- Gay originally meant something closer to carefree, with undertones of being unrestrincted by social conventions. That last bit made it mean something along the lines of 'bohemian' in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, in which it was used to refer to loose women and homosexuals. Noel Coward was using it as a double entrendre for homosexual by the 1920s, and it was understood.
- "Lame" (unable to walk) and "dumb" (unable to speak) went from their respective meanings to being a synonym for "stupid" thanks to the dysphemism treadmill. Words denoting negatively perceived characteristics naturally become used as insults. "Idiot", "imbecile" and "cretin" were medical terms in the early 20th century, and "LD" for "learning disability" is already being used as a playground insult.
- The word "stupid" itself is one of these. Originally it meant "in a stupor", so calling somebody stupid didn't mean unintelligent, but rather unresponsive.
- "Dumb" as stupid and "dumb" as mute both come from "dumb" defined as "lacking an expected property", which is the etymology of "dummy". The OED suggests the Proto-Germanic meaning to be something like 'stupid', 'not understanding' (compare Modern German dumm, tumb.
- Retarded used to mean that someone has a mental disability and is unable to learn at a normal rate. Recently, it turned into a synonym for stupid.
- Retardation as an individual word means "the act or result of delaying;" to be "retarded" literally means to be delayed. Hence, a "flame retardant" is something that delays the onset of catching fire or combustion. Anything can be "retarded" in the sense of "delayed" though no one really uses it as such anymore, because it has evolved so thoroughly into its colloquial "slang" meaning.
- Also Older Than They Think, idiot. It stems from the ancient greek word idiotes or ίδιώτης and actually describes a non-schooled person. Ok, the modern usage actually occured in English first, around 1300 AD, but still... (No, I didn't look that up, not at all!)
- "Extreme" and "moderate". Given a scale, anything near either end is extreme while anything near the middle is moderate, there is nothing inherently good or bad about either. Contrast to the popular belief that "extremist" means "nutcase".
- It probably is derived from the hatred of the recent "Muslim extremists", who are terrorists.
- If you had a time machine, and you traveled back to about 200 years ago, you would be (have been?) an extremist for thinking a) slavery ought to be abolished immediately and b) women should be able to vote.
- "To beg the question" is to commit a logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises (e.g. "Of course I had a reason for doing it - otherwise, I wouldn't have done it!"). The phrase, however, is frequently used with the meaning "to raise the question" (e.g. "If you didn't put the overalls in Mrs. Murphy's chowder, it begs the question of who did."). Technically, describing this fallacy as "begging the question" is also incorrect, as "beg" is a truncated form of "beget," as in "to generate." Bringing up that technicality, however, should be considered highly pedantic.
- Piloted Humongous Mecha are typically referred as "Giant Robots" despite the text book definition of robot is "an autonomous device".
- This goes for smaller ones too, like the machines in Battlebots and Robot Wars being remote-controlled rather than autonomous.
- "Distaff" means "female". Some tropers have described the male counterpart to an Always Female trope as a Distaff Counterpart.
- Technically, a distaff is a tool used for spinning fabric. It came to symbolize domestic life, which of course was associated with women. The male equivalent would be "Sword Counterpart" (or "Spear Counterpart").
- You know how a freight train carries goods? And a freighter is just such a ship? Fraught means 'laden with' and not 'distressing' or 'distressed'. You can say 'fraught with worry' because that would be a correct use of the word.
- Similarly, an abuse of power by a government is not a "travesty." It might be (or cause) a tragedy, or a "travesty of justice," which is where the misuse probably derives from, but "travesty" means "a grotesque misinterpretation." (You know, like butchering the word travesty.)
- The word "hang" originally used to be two verbs forming a pair like "lie" and "lay". However, they formed different past tenses, and as a result of the collapse of both together there is a confusion about which verb's past tense is right: "hanged" or "hung". The dialects of English vary greatly in their preferences. Details and discussion here, here, here and here. Legal language seems to have preferred "hanged", leading to the myth that this is correct for executions. But law also calls them "hung juries", never hanged. You are as likely to hear "hanged, drawn and quartered" as "hung, -". So anybody who tells you "hanged" is for death penalties and "hung" is for seasoning meat is:
- Asserting a rule that has never been obeyed. It's not traditionally correct, or precedent, or preserving the meaning at all.
- Shouldn't be obeyed. It's only "useful" in the past tense, and ignores that these are both highly specific uses of the word, ignoring what to do for the simple meaning of "suspend".
- If it does, it's ignoring the fact there is no standard for that, which was the whole point.
- Is at least partly motivated by fear of making a purile joke.
- Also, a dead man's corpse is meat, so it's first one, then the other.
- "Bar mitzvah" literally translates to "one to whom the commandments apply", and so it is something that boys become. Therefore, you do not "have a bar mitzvah"; you have a celebration to commemorate becoming a bar mitzvah. And as any Jewish parent will tell you, planning one of these parties is like planning a wedding.
- The word "nonplussed" does not mean aloof and indifferent, it means confused and perplexed.
Less Pedantic (I do not think it means what you think it means)
- The word "factoid" is often used as if it meant "little fact", as in "here's a little factoid for you". It actually means "something resembling a fact but with no evidence to support it".
- "Literally" is often used as a generic intensifier, a "smarter-sounding" substitute for "really" or similar. Often seen in usages like "it was literally a slaughter!" in reference to, say, a sporting event (assuming said sport isn't a Blood Sport). Literally, of course, actually means "not figuratively." See Literal Metaphor.
- Which really just means that this use of the word "literal" is a figurative use.
- Thus robbing the word of any meaning at all.
- This would just appear to be a case of that weird property where a word can mean two apparently contradictory things (see, for example, "dust," or "cleave"). I'm not going to argue with Webster.
- The word "indeed," used the same way on this wiki, when its real meaning is to confirm the truth of a statement. For example, the usage, "One bad motherfucker indeed," if referring to Samuel L Jackson, is correct, as the "indeed," serves to emphasize the truth of the description. The usage, formerly of the Order Of The Stick Crowning Moment Of Awesome page, "'Stay the hell away from us!' indeed," is not correct: There is nothing in the statement being confirmed, so "indeed" is incorrect.
- Methinks the previous editor should look up the meaning of the word "irony".
- A "cannibal" eats members of its own species. Something that is non-human, but eats humans, is an "anthropophage." "Anthropophage" is a pretty pedantic word, but come on, use "man-eater" or something. Technically a human who eats other humans would be a cannibal and an anthropophage, but "cannibal" seems superordinate in this case.
- This gets a little fuzzy in the case of non-human humanoids that might eat humans, such as ogres or orcs.
- "Ironic" doesn't (simply) mean "funny", "unexpected" or "cruel." See Irony for more on the subject, and Isnt It Ironic for more on the misuse.
- ... which leads to the fact that "sarcastic" doesn't (always) mean "cruelly smartassed", that would be "sardonic".
- If you want the irony without the cruelty, the word you want is "facetious".
- Sarcastic originally meant "cruelly smartassed," without any implication of ironic wordplay, and in a very technical sense it STILL means that (encompassing, for example, a request addressed to a rock band to "play a medley of its hit").
- Oh really? How incredibly interesting...
- "hysteric(al)" on its own doesn't mean "funny" either.
- "Irregardless" is not a word at all. In a case of actual irony, this is almost the exclusive purview of people trying to sound more literate than they are, and achieving the exact opposite. In a case of further irony, you're vastly more likely to encounter this word in a style guide or as part of a joke than you are to ever hear anyone using it naïvely; we're calling out people who "don't know the language" by accusing them of using what was originally a non-word, even in a descriptivist sense. Linguists often refer to this fairly common phenomenon as "overnegation".
- It is so common that the SAT has at least one question per writing section testing it. It is usually under the hardest questions, too.
- A "scientific theory" is a testable model that fits all the evidence so far collected. It is not the same as a "guess" or a "wild speculation". This one is a common Berserk Button for those who commonly get into debates on the theory of evolution.
- Also for quite a few actual scientists, who generally do not appreciate being accused of randomly groping in the dark because "theory means you're not sure."
- You can probably blame this one on one too many TV/movie/book detectives using "theory" when they meant "hypothesis". Or just common use of the phrase "in theory" to mean "in an ideal situation that might be true, but it isn't".
- Worse yet, a lot of times people will use "theory" when they mean "pulling something unverifiable out of your ass." Basically any form of creationism neither a theory (for obvious reasons) nor a hypothesis; the point of a hypothesis is that it can be empirically tested and proven false.
- However, due to this constant misuse, an alternate dictionary definition of "theory" developed, meaning "hypothesis."
- Similarly the term "evolution" and "natural selection" are used interchangeably. Evolution refers to the observed changes over time. While natural selection is the theorized (real meaning) mechanism for those changes.
- 'Theory of Evolution' is a nicely vague catchphrase perpetuated by media who wouldn't be able to explain why it's a theory rather than a hypothesis. Compare with 'Natural Selection', which is established theory according to the definition of theory.
- "Penultimate" means "next to last," but is often used to simply mean "last". "Antepenultimate" means "next to next to last," (or more simply, third to last), but no one ever uses it.
- The original word for last was 'ultimate' (paene means 'almost'), however, even pedants have given up on convincing people that it means anything other than 'maximum'.
- Students of Latin are taught about the ultima, penult, and antepenult when it comes to placing the stress on the correct syllable of a word — but then again, students of Latin probably don't need "penultimate" explained to them.
- It goes one step further- Subantepenultimate.
- The word was used and explained correctly in the A Series Of Unfortunate Events book, "The Penultimate Peril," which was the twelfth and second-to-last book.
- "Subversion," well... see Not A Subversion.
- The Ur Example is the first example of something, not the most memorable or best.
- Romeo and Juliet. Especially "A modern Romeo and Juliet." People use this to describe true, deep love, but Romeo and Juliet was about the folly of love at first sight, their relationship was based purely on appearances - and for Romeo, he felt the exact same way about another girl the day before he met Juliet - and it was doomed from the start. Know the damn play before you refer to it, people.
- This, of course, all depends on your interpretation of the play itself. Browbeating others on a subjective idea is generally frowned upon.
- Well, Romeo and Juliet was originally a comedy, and the pattern in Shakespeare's comedies is for people to make asses of themselves by doing idiotic things. Such as meet someone and decide you're in love with them forever, enough to kill yourself over it.
- "Wherefore" is another phrase made known by the play—and used incorrectly nearly every time you hear it. Wherefore does not mean where, it means why. As in, "Why are you Romeo?" Juliet is asking him why he exists and makes her life complicated. The question comes off as a lot deeper than asking, "Where are you, Romeo?"
- Actually, she's asking why his is named Romeo Montague; she loves him, but wishes that he wasn't a member of the family feuding with hers, as that complicates their relationship.
- Following on nicely, many people use Star Crossed Lovers to describe love between people from radically opposing political groups or families. It means doomed lovers. It has always meant doomed lovers. Star crossed. Doomed by forces beyond human control- doomed by the stars.
- Or even worse, using it to mean "deeply in love". Has nothing to do with deeply.
- You can only truly "plead the fifth" in a particularly bad court of Hollywood Law. The correct phrase is to "take the fifth" (for those non-Americans unaffected by the Eagleland Osmosis: "The fifth" is the fifth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, one clause of which protects against self-incrimination; when being "read your rights", this is the first right you are reminded of). Pleading requires a "plea", most often "not guilty" or "guilty".
- Similarly (and technically), one cannot plead insanity. One would instead plead "not guilty by reason of insanity/mental defect/etc."
- Also worth noting is that one cannot be "diagnosed" as insane, because insanity is a legal concept, not a medical one. Even if a medical professional determines a person is mentally ill, a court must decide if that mental illness is legally relevant.
- As long as we've gotten to "Socialism", it's not a form of rule, but a form of economic implementation. No matter how much the government is involved in something, if someone else is also involved in it and does not answer to the government or the people, it's most definitely not socialism. In the US, schools aren't socialist, because private schools exist. Not even the Post Office is socialist, even if no one is allowed to deliver regular mail, because you have UPS and Fed Ex to compete with them on large-parcel delivery.
- "Crescendo" refers to the process of getting louder, or greater in some other way, not to the peak reached at the end of that process. So something can't "reach a crescendo" - well, it can, but that would mean the point where things start to get more intense. The word you're probably looking for is "climax".
- "Organic", as a term in chemistry, means "made of carbon compounds". It is most often used in Speculative Fiction to mean "living tissue", especially in reference to something that only works on living beings, such as scans for lifeforms or Terminator time travel. Some will grant that the term also applies to things made from plant or animal matter, such as cotton clothing. Hardly anyone would ever use the term to refer to something patently artificial, despite the fact that plastic is organic. In fact, not only is plastic organic, but the scientific field in which one makes plastics is called organic chemistry.
- There's a whole other problem with using the word to mean...well, whatever it's used to mean in relation to wholesome foods that are free of chemical additives and pesticides. Not only is the definition fuzzy (and more so the more you get into the science of it) but the word is often slapped onto products that most likely don't fit your average consumer's idea of what "organic" means. But because the definition's vague, companies are allowed to market things with the word and people are happy to pay more for them without reading the fine print.
- A particularly egregious example is from the RPG Prime Directive, which used "organic chemistry" to refer to biochemistry and "inorganic chemistry" to refer to all other branches of chemistry including actual organic chemistry.
- CSI Miami went as far as to suggest that sodium hydroxide would dissolve glass and not plastic, because glass is organic and plastic isn't. Glass is made of silicon and is inorganic. Plastic made of petrocarbons, on the other hand... Not to mention that sodium hydroxide doesn't dissolve glass anyway.
- "Exponentially more" is sometimes incorrectly used to mean "much more". Mathematically speaking, "exponentially more" refers only to the difference between the rates of increase of two functions, and has a much more specific meaning than "this is growing faster than that". Static values can never be "exponentially more" at all. Most people who say this mean "orders of magnitude greater". (An "order of magnitude" is ten times, so more than one would be 100 times, 1000 times, or more.)
- To be excessively technical, an order of magnitude is not necessarily ten times; it is only ten times if one is using base 10 math (granted, the majority of people outside the computer science and mathematical fields probably wouldn't know that other mathematical bases existed, and, granted, when one speaks of mathematics, one assumes base 10 unless otherwise noted).
- The mathematical meaning of "exponentially more/less" is about the asymptotic complexity of a function equal to the difference between two functions. (More specifically, a function f(x) is said to be "exponentially greater" than another function g(x) if their difference (f(x) - g(x)) is a function that has the same asymptotic complexity as some function h(x) that grows exponentially with x. Another, probably more common definition is that their ratio (f(x)/g(x)) grows faster than any power of x. If one starts to be pedantic, the latter is called super-polynomial, and most people insist on using ratios (2^x doesn't really grow faster than 2*2^x)) This means that it's incorrect to say that something is "exponentially more/less" than something else when the two things being compared are just constant quantities, rather than quantities that increase as functions of some variable (such as time).
- A "quantum" is a discrete unit of something. Therefore, when James Bond finds his Quantum Of Solace, he doesn't feel that much better. A quantum leap is a change that happens instantaneously, without any intermediate states happening along the way. The distance leaped over does not need to be the smallest possible. Some pedants have not quite grasped this.
- Nor does it necessarily mean "a huge leap" as is often used by marketroids - whether or not it's even accurate in that context. ("A quantum leap in price, performance and affordability!") Thankfully it is often used more or less correctly by technology writers, where the phrase "quantum leap" is used to describe advances in a field of study that are not simply progressive refinements of existing knowledge, but an entirely new idea that seems to have sprung whole-cloth all at once.
- If you could care less, then there is the chance that you really do care. You mean you could NOT care less. There's only one more syllable in that phrase. Use it.
- "Inflammable" is not an antonym to "flammable"; it's a synonym. The antonym is "non-flammable". (Granted, this is played for comedy more often than it's used seriously...)
- The confusion here is partially due to the fact that inflammable came first - flammable was a back formation when people kept making the mistake of assuming inflammable meant things couldn't catch on fire.
- "Inflammable means flammable? What a country!"
- The confusion is based on the fact that English uses the prefix "in" to mean "not" for many other words. "Inhumane" means not humane. In fact, most uses of the prefix "in" mean "not", very few fit the inflammable style. As a result, use of the word inflammable (derived from latin) is highly discouraged and even prohibited in some circumstances. Flammable is to be used instead.
- "Mano a mano."-A commonly used Spanish term thought by some to mean, "Man to man" it actually means "hand to hand". Anyone saying that they want to settle things "mano a mano" before pulling out a gun is an example. At the 2009 MTV Movie Awards, two man on man kisses were described as "mano a mano".
- The word "whom" is used by many as simply "who, but fancier." In fact, it's "who" as an object to a verb, so if you ever see someone use it otherwise ("Whom are you?" for example), they're futzing it up. As a general rule, replace the usage of "whom" with "him" and see if it still makes sense.
- Another note on "whom" and its usage: Whom will often be found in the passive tense, and rarely in active speach. Note the difference between "I know of whom you speak" and "I know who you're speaking about."
- Ah, "passive" is another great example. Passive is a voice, not a tense, but most importantly, both of those sentences are in the active voice. In fact, you can only use "whom" as the object of a transitive verb in the active voice, because when you make it passive the direct object becomes the subject, and thus requires "who".
- A vaccine is a weakened form of a disease that trains the body how to fight that disease. As mentioned in Magic Antidote, though, people tend to simply replace it with the word "cure." A weakened form of the disease is not going to help you if you're undergoing the eleventh hour of the full-blown symptoms. It will just make things worse.
- "Bemused" has nothing to do with being "amused" - in fact it means "utterly confused."
- Although the meaning has definitely begun to drift in that direction; the current meaning is a sort of mixture of the two.
- Slander and libel tend to be used interchangeably - in fact, at least one popular television show thinks libel is slander and slander is libel. Libel refers specifically to defamation in the form of written words, while slander denotes defamation in the form of spoken words.
- Cheap at half the price. Well yeah, most things would be...
- Of course, this probably comes from confusion with "cheap at twice the price," a perfectly sensible expression.
- In MMORPGs, people often say, "Spell X has been casted" or "I have casted spell X". There is no word "casted". The word "cast" covers both present and past tenses. So both, "I will cast spell X on the monster" and "I have cast spell X on the monster" are the correct forms.
- Inbreeding means breeding among closely related individuals. Not breeding with members of another group or anything else.
- If no offspring are produced, then it's just incest.
- The confusion likely comes from the word "interbreeding."
- A woman cannot employ a manservant. The "man" refers not to the servant but to the employer. Therefore, Jeeves is a "man's servant".
- Similiarly, a butler is the head of a large household of servants, dealing specifically with the wine cellars - "butler" is, in fact, a corruption of "bottler". Because Jeeves is Bertie Wooster's only servant, he cannot, by definition, be a butler. (The word you're looking for is "valet".)
- To infer and to imply are different things. Person A may infer that Person B is stupid from the latter's misuse of words. Person A may then imply Person B's stupidity through witticism. Person B's inevitably incorrect response will be "Are you inferring that I'm stupid?" Person B is, in fact, inferring that Person A is implying that Person B is stupid, and they're right.
- Manic-depression does not mean "very depressed", but is a different condition more properly referred to as bipolar disorder. Similarly, "chronic" is sometimes misused (of an illness) to mean "severe" rather than the actual meaning of "persistant and/or slowly developing".
- "Disinterested" is not a synonym for "uninterested"; it means, rather, that you are unbiased or have no vested interest.
- The term "light year" refers to a measure of distance: the distance light travels in a year. Many writers have made the mistake of using the term to describe a very long period of time. This is the one mistake guaranteed to infuriate pedants.
- This was referenced in Pokemon Red/Blue when a trainer remarked "You're light years away from beating me!" and then when beaten admitted "Light years isn't time! It measures distance!"
- Of course, often what a pedant interprets as literal but incorrect time could also be figurative and correct distance; a Sufficiently Advanced Alien might well be light-years more advanced than us if you take it to be a metaphor using distance in place of quantity of technical and scientific knowledge.
- In fact the construction "light-years ahead" is parallel to "miles ahead". Some pedants need to actually pay attention to the language they're using.
- Similar to "light year", "parsec" is short for "parallax second", but is also a measure of distance, not time: roughly 3 1/4 light years. The Millennium Falcon was able to shave distance off a smuggling run.
- "Peruse" means "to read thoroughly", NOT "to skim."
- "Incredulous" means "not believing," NOT "incredible." If someone sees something incredible, then they can be incredulous.
- For small arms caliber means the diameter of a bullet. "High caliber" is NOT, in fact, a way of saying "High power". E.g. A 7.62x39mm round fired from an AKM will not impart as much energy to a target as a 7.62x54mm round fired from a SVD Dragunov, nor will the 9x19mm Parabellum round impart as much energy as the 7.62x25mm Tokarev round.
- Another way to think of it is that a "high caliber bullet" will generally be fired from a bigger gun. However, caliber has nothing to do with strength by itself. If you're trying to say that a high caliber hand gun is more powerful than a low caliber rifle, chances are that you're wrong. Unless you want to get into the specifics of grain count, rifling twist, bullet velocity and weight, you're better off assuming that hand guns are less powerful than rifles.
- "Conspicuous" means "obvious," not "suspicious," no matter the way it sounds. Thus, if something was conspicuously absent, you are merely able to notice that it was absent; you do not necessarily have to raise an eyebrow at its absence.
- An acronym is an initialism which forms a word, such as "laser" (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), "AWOL" (absent without leave), or "amphetamine" (alpha-methyl-phenethylamine). Most people use "acronym" as though it were synonymous with "initialism", referring to terms such as "NYPD", "USB" or "MDMA" as acronyms.
- Fascism is a political ideology that combines political radicalism, authoritarianism, nationalism, corporatism and certain forms of Social Darwinism. Most modern people and political parties that don't self-identify as "fascist" problably aren't fascists. Definite no-no's include communists, liberals, internationalists, socialists, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, Youth Hostels, Gandhi, women and dogs.
- Sycophant is an ancient Greek term for "informer" and "public accusor". They would expose the crimes of others to the authorities and be rewarded with a fee. By the 5th century BC, Aristophanes' comedies point to this having become a profession and practitioners caring little of the truth behind their accusations. Thus it gained the meaning of falsely accusing people and in practice being a "slanderer". A meaning kept in the Greek language. The English meanings of "flatterer", "bootlicker", etc seem to ignore the original meaning but date all the way back to the 1600s.
- Strictly speaking, there is no single period in prehistory called "the Stone Age." The term originates from a listing of the three stages of a prehistoric society: Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. In the most literal sense of the term, there were still "Stone Age" people living in isolated parts of the world by the time The Flintstones first went on air, although the term is usually limited to Eurasian cultures.
- "Yea", an archaic version of "yes", is often used in place of "yeah".
- "Inconceivable." I repeat, I do not think it means what you think it means. It means that something is impossible even to imagine (or, depending on usage, to conceive in a biological sense, such as an inter-species crossbreed). It does not mean "impossible", "highly unlikely", or "unfortunate".
- In all fairness, though, it's mostly used as hyperbole. Which sounds more impressive: that you did something impossible to do, or that you did something impossible to think of?
- Not to mention the apparent contradiction when someone states something is inconceivable, it's probably already been conceived and indeed described to provoke the reaction.
- Frankly, Vizzini's so arrogant that the thought that events might not conform to his plans never crosses his mind. Wesley tracking them across the sea and chasing them up the Cliffs of Insanity were feats Vizzini never considered someone doing and would thus be, to him, inconceivable.
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