Such as “money can’t buy happiness” or “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Generally a false adage or something like that. All I could think of was “fallacious bumper sticker” which just sounds stupid.
Such as “money can’t buy happiness” or “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Generally a false adage or something like that. All I could think of was “fallacious bumper sticker” which just sounds stupid.
“Decimate” =/= “devastate”, but common misuse becomes common use, so here we are. 🤦♂️
Language is fun like that. Kinda like how ‘literally’ can, and often does, mean ‘figuratively’, which has the opposite meaning.
The meaning of a word doesn’t change just because you use it incorrectly.
That is literally how language works. Words only mean what we mean when we say them.
So if I potato, you can ottoman?
If enough people agree, yes.
They don’t.
That’s actually the point. Nobody agrees that potato=ottoman but if enough people agree on a meaning it starts to become the meaning or at least a partial meaning. Maybe the point is moot with you but I get the feeling you wouldn’t understand the joke.
Language morphology, but you’re close. Except for that last sentence, technically. That’s some bullshit, right there. 🤣
Yep decimate is so commonly misused that our lovely descriptivist dictionaries are now incorporating the incorrect use as correct. It’s too bad, too, because the word had a very specific meaning which is now lost. The language is less useful for changes like this.