meh expressions like that don't make sense to me. all these people everywhere saying things that don't make sense just because someone else said it before them. it's all just peer pressure from books and dead people.
meanwhile I'm over here trying to understand and participate in conversations and no one cares about people who take words at face value. I hate this goddamned planet
I think you are probably right that it is just the result of people mishearing the expression. In particular if my understanding was correct it would be delivered in a tone similar to how you’d expect to hear something like, “well, I could care less,” if that makes sense.
But, I prefer to be wrong in a way that makes me believe people are being clever.
"Some people are right but if you tilt your head and squint you can almost understand the argument from the others"
I don't know how to respond to these lines of reasoning anymore except to say that words mean things and it's worth keeping definitions consistent for the sake of our common understanding.
Amen. I mean, maybe I expect too much of other people, but I always try to interpret what they say in the most coherent sense possible. People talking about this kind of stuff don't usually just mash the keyboard - they have something to say and assuming that it's crap because the literal interpretation is crap is dumb.
Yes, because nobody can calculate in advance the thousands of ways any particular utterance might be interpreted by someone. It's rather neurotic to try, and much easier to just say what you mean, and accept that haters gonna hate.
And expressions out of context make absolutely no sense. His usage was borderline but still applies.
Perhaps, rather than sit up on that high horse, you should come back down here and figure out that explaining an expression like that is HELPFUL in a discussion full of people from across the world that may or may not have ever heard it.
Interesting. All of the above rebuttals are basically: ignore this because it's context and should be obvious.
Well, that's the problem. It might seem obvious to you now, but it is not obvious to everyone all the time, which is what makes any statement ambiguous.
Additionally, I don't know the purpose of what you are saying. For example, you might say you ran a mile because you wanted to express you were tired, or because you wanted to imply you are healthy, or who knows why, it is definitely not clear from the statement alone what you wanted to convey, which is the main problem.
We feel something internally and then we try to express that in words, hoping that those words will mean the same to the person perceiving them. That process is highly suceptible to noise in many forms, like the other person not hearing you correctly, being distracted, being stressed out, or maybe they speak a slightly different version of your language and some of the words or expressions mean something a bit different to them than to you.
In the end, any statement doesn't have meaning by itself, it only acquires meaning when someone interprets it and understands it in a certain way. That is always a subjective process.
That is precisely what they did. "(Objectively innocuous statement X) is being understood by certain people to mean (Y) instead".
Count how many times weasel words like "is being understood as" or "could mean" are used. Understood by who? How many people? Based on what? "Could" mean? This kind of unsourced and unsourceable fuzziness is a telltale sign that you are reading someone's opinion, not a recounting of facts.
Could be that, but that would indeed be a misinterpretation. Could also be that people who don't agree with a reasoning tend to try to twist other people's words to make their arguments look wrong.
Anyway, I'll try to be stupid and mean next time so there is no ambiguity.
Natural languages aren't logical. Pretending or wishing otherwise is a fool's errand, and I guarantee there are many words and phrases you use all the time without thinking that are entirely illogical, but still make sense.
> words or phrases taking on the opposite meaning of their literal definition
The word you're looking for is "auto-antonym". Very common.
> “I could care less” ... Perhaps it’s debatable whether that one has achieved acceptance or not.
It has; the variance between could/couldn't is mainly regional. And it's an example of how phrases or idioms have independent meaning outside of the individual words.[1] Another good example is something like the [North American] "How are you?" - it's a greeting, not (usually) a literal question about how someone is.
Or maybe they think that words matter and if you care enough about something to be calling people to action maybe you should care enough to phrase your words so they're less ambiguous.
Not everyone reads things the same way, even if you think it's the obvious and only way to interpret something. If they did, there would be a lot less misunderstandings online.
Someone pointing out ambiguity is possibly helping you refine your point and message, so if you encounter it maybe try to read it less as someone being a pedantic asshole and instead someone helping you express your message more successfully. At a minimum it will likely help you keep a good attitude or emotional state, which is nothing to sneeze at.
> It's presumptuous to imply that one knows what someone else is thinking.
I agree and sympathize. But incidentally, the original use of that phrase was not so presumptuous. In case you (or anyone reading this) don't know, the original quote is from the movie "The Princess Bride", where one character repeatedly says that some possible event would be "inconceivable" and then that event happens--he also exclaims that some events that have just happened are "Inconceivable!". Another character tells him, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." It's "don't think it means", not "doesn't mean": this contains a proper amount of uncertainty for being a deduction about someone's likely thoughts based on observation of their actions.
And, as a matter of fact, cynicalkane's comment was similar: "I don't think [thing] means what you think it means." Also he didn't include an adaptation of the "You keep using that word" part--I would have found that irritating, being an excessive use of movie references that would make nonsensical writing if the movie didn't exist--but cynicalkane's comment flows naturally, and I consider it a proper use of the phrase. I can only assume that you have seen a bunch of other comments using the presumptuous form (if we want to be grumpy old men, we might say "perversion") of the quote, and cynicalkane's comment was similar enough that you thought of the other comments and decided to complain here. (I haven't actually seen the presumptuous form myself, though I'm willing to believe you've seen it enough to be irritated--and a quick google suggests it does have a large presence. I'd probably be annoyed too.)
Can we find some other way to convey this message without using that same tired old phrase over and over and over again? As soon as I see this phrase by brain automatically shuts down because it tells me the author lacks creativity.
Are people who post to nerd forums really that deficient in English language skills? Or are they just hoplessly compelled to mimic the language used by others?
"means what you think it means" is like some kind of lingusitic meme.
Future posters: Let's be creative and devise another way to state this.
This comment is not personal. It is just a randomexample of a phenomena. Many, many, many nerds use this phrase. I'm just tired of reading it. I can't be the only one. Next time you are tempted to type "doesn't mean what you think it means", please stop yourself. Write it some other way.
You think it's worse to interpret a word literally if that literal definition is broad, than it is to interpret a word in a way that makes the other person seem delusional and nonsensical? In the context of a specific conversation, its more reasonable to interpret somebodies words in a way that makes their words make sense, than in a way that makes them sound delusional.
meanwhile I'm over here trying to understand and participate in conversations and no one cares about people who take words at face value. I hate this goddamned planet
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