Language is always changing. At one point ‘an apron’ was ‘a napron’ while words like ‘literally’ are no longer literally literal. What are some language battles that have been lost in living memory and what are some others you predict will soon occur?
Edit: Non-english examples very welcome!
People no longer double-space after sentences. No one cares that further compares metaphorical distance and farther compares physical distance. Most people seem to think that joining two independent clauses with a comma (a comma splice) is just fine. Things are now done on accident instead of by accident. Compute used to be something you did; now, it’s something you rent. People seem to have given up on less being used for uncountable things and fewer for countable things. Now they just use less for everything. People these days are enamored ‘by’ something instead of with it (or of it, for our British friends).
Ending sentences with propositions, and getting them jumbled around. My work does it in their advertisements and i cry every time.
“See what classes you can register for.” Or modifying it to be worse; “see what classes you can register for fast”
propositions
Hey sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?
LOL I’m gonna leave it that way 🤣
Us that technically a missing Oxford comma, or just a missing comma?
The grandma quote is a missing comma in general, but there’s another reply with a missing Oxford Comma.
Although punctuation is waning, I’m willing to spend the time to use it.
The rich couple, me and ScarJo donated ten thousand dollars to a local charity school.
Y’all make a cute couple but she’s doing the heavy lifting.
That’s typical of her relationships.
From my cold dead hands!!
Ain’t ain’t a word.
It is now.
Unique coming to just mean unusual.
Apple put the nail in the coffin for adverbs when “Think different” let illiterates think they were speaking correctly.
*speaking correct
.
I’m so sorry; I couldn’t help myself
Not exactly what you’re asking, but double spaces after ends of sentences.
I still use them. I find it makes reading and finding sentences easier in a paragraph. There was a study that it had an impact
“Reticent” used to mean ‘reluctance to speak’, or, ‘holding your tongue’, but in the last decade I saw it being used more frequently as a straight up synonym for ‘reluctance’. I wonder if people maybe think it’s a more authoritative sounding word?
It’s not a change of convenience or cultural drift, just a sign of people reading less and subconsciously trying to hide it, I think.
Literally and Crescendo are my vocabulary pet peeves. Both have stupidly evolved to include definitions that mean the exact opposite of their true meanings.
Literally is annoying, but Crescendo is impossible. That is a specific musical term with an unalterable meaning. It means a gradual increase in volume, but it has come to mean a climax. Something will be described as “it rose to a crescendo,” and that is simply wrong. Something can crescendo to a climax, but not the other way around. If you change it to mean the climax, you can’t crescendo to a crescendo, s what’s the word for gradually increasing the volume?
Besides, it’s a musical term, and musicians will define musical terms, not illiterate civilians.
And if Literally can also mean “similar to,” then what word can be used to literally mean Literally?
That’s it, I’m going to start using “It rose to a fortissississimo”!
And don’t get me started on how the Pianoforte is just called the piano now, leaving out half of its loudness range smh.
Literallyly
The one that bothers me most (heard a lot in the software dev world) is when people say process-eez instead of processes, even if it is technically a word now, like ain’t
I was one of the first years to have the new spelling rules.
It used to be, that a letter appearing more than twice in direct sequence would be cut to just twice. But that was lifted and is now just how many it should normally be. Examples: Schifffahrt, Brennnessel, Seeelefant.It used to be, that “dass” could also be spelt “daß”, but the rules for “ss” and “ß” were made clearer and more concise.
They also changed the way words could be split at the end of a line. If there was a double consonant in-between the syllables that were to split, the first syllable would take both consonants but now they are split evenly.
immer is split im-mer and not imm-er
But ck makes an exception: knackig is kna-ckig instead of old knak-kigIn US usage, it used to be that a situation could be “fraught with” complications, or hidden meaning, or difficulty, but it had to be “fraught with” something.
These days, the British style of saying that the situation is simply “fraught” seems to be way more popular than before.
Efficiency at work i guess. Maybe some cunning linguist can explain.
“Decimating” no longer means killing ten percent as the Romans did; now it is used to mean the killing of a majority, so it’s close to the opposite of its original meaning.
I thought decimating meant reducing to a tenth, as in removing 90%?
No. It meant killing every tenth soldier in a line
The meaning is derived from the brutality of the act, not the proportion of people killed.
You’re being downvoted, but I suspect you’re actually correct. A note about the act of decimation: it wasn’t just killing every tenth soldier. It was that the other nine soldiers were forced to kill the tenth. It was an absolutely brutal act where soldiers were forced to kill their friends and comrades.
It makes sense that saying an act is as brutal as decimation would then come to replace the word itself over time. That happens pretty frequently in language evolution.
People really love to feel smug about others using words “wrong” for some reason. Let them. I don’t care.
The “deci” prefix is just a coincidence then?
More like a vague gesture, which, in idiom chock-full of metonymy, is legitimate.
We were always supposed to put punctuation inside quotation marks; however, now it seems to be the user’s choice of inside or outside. And I have to admit that most of the time when I’m using quotes, it seems more logical to me to place the punctuation outside of them.
We were always supposed to put punctuation inside quotation marks;
Isn’t this a US English thing? In India we were taught to close them like brackets - i.e., the one that opened last closes first. So
‘Don’t wait. I will come later.’
But
He said ‘I will come later’.
You know, I actually prefer that it be variable, but only when it serves a purpose.
Like, if Im quoting someone “I might want to indicate that they completed a sentence.”, but also continue beyond it.
Yeah, I still feel like I’m supposed to, but frequently I think it makes more sense to pull it outside if it isn’t part of the quote. Putting it in the quotation makes it seem like it’s associated with the quotation, when it may not be.
For me, i make peace with this by thinking, the rules are one way for writing dialog, and perhaps another way when needing to convey the exactness of a quote.
YES! That’s basically my same reasoning.
Loose and lose might as well be the same word these days. Drives me up a damn wall.
That and “POV” doesn’t mean what it used to mean anymore. Also drives me up a wall.
Is it not “point of view”?
Yeah but it used to mean “piss over vulvas”. Pornhub changed the meaning to “point of view” and everyone just went with it.
Yeah, I remember an exchange I had, where someone asked what POV means I answered with Point of View and some spoiled Z started laughing, saying I outed myself, but as table top gamer… that was always the abbreviation we used.
I assume that kid thought it was only for porn. Ironically, they are the ones who outed themselves, though who gives a shit? Everyone watches porn.
POV has meant point of view for far longer than porn has used it. I have no idea of the origins, but it’s old. I remember using it in English classes to describe how stories were written, for example, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a modern thing.
Correct, correct. I don’t really have good memories of that place due to some other reasons.
And what does it mean for those people?
“Piss over vulvas”? Not sure if that’s real.
What…what does POV mean now??
POV: I am confused
wait what is that supposed to mean? (i’m not a native english speaker, might be why i don’t get it)
Just demonstrating an incorrect use of POV 😅
“Demonstrating my point of view: I am confused”
thanks
I’m still confused? It’s not Point of View, it’s Confused Point of View?
They gave that as an example. POV just seems to be used an an unnecessary prefix to stating an opinion.
A bit like to “useless ‘nobody:’” line before a meme caption.
huh? i don’t think some_kind_of_guy is saying ‘POV’ means “I am confused” (is that how you understood the comment above?)
“Drives me up the wall” becoming “drives me up a wall”.
This drives me up that wall
Hey, maybe they have a specific wall up which they are driven!
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