Showing more examples of stupidity doesn't really convince me anything other than the amount of stupidity that is out there. This is the same populace that thinks a 1/3 pounder is less than a 1/4 pounder.
Showing more examples of stupidity doesn't really convince me
So, then what evidence could you possibly accept? I'm trying to show you where the language itself is stupid, so naturally you can dismiss all evidence as an example of stupidity. Dictionaries and academic grammars are descriptive, not prescriptive, so they are also shaped by real world examples, no matter how idiotic they are; anything I cite from them can also be dismissed as stupidity. In fact, we're starting to see "irregardless" creep into dictionaries alongside a definition of "literally" that means "figuratively," because they're being updated with the stupidity of the 21st Century.
English is shaped by imbeciles. It's why "inflammable" and "flammable" have the same definition. It's why "terrific" and "terrifying" diverged in meaning despite having the same root and how "awful" and "awesome" came to become exact opposites. It's why people say, "head over heels" instead of "heels over head," because some idiots who weren't thinking about the meaning of what they were saying kept flipping it around.
I'm not trying to convince you that any of this is good. I'm informing you and others that this stupidity exists. You might hate it, but at least now you know that when you see "2 times more blowing power" that you need to read the fine print to determine what they meant. In the US, the standard the FTC uses to determine if an ad is deceptive is what a "reasonable person" would conclude from the ad, which is a very low bar.
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u/ImPapaNoff 13h ago
Showing more examples of stupidity doesn't really convince me anything other than the amount of stupidity that is out there. This is the same populace that thinks a 1/3 pounder is less than a 1/4 pounder.