this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2025
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Idk why, maybe because I'm a scientist, but this speaks to something in my soul
I thought briefly about editing that to say, "in this context", but I thought it might be redundant.
It's like the whole fruit/vegetable debate, and there not really being a scientific category of "vegetables" that aligns with the common usage. However, in common usage, the loose, lay definition of "vegetable" is far more useful than the scientific, taxonomical one.
Context is king.
Yeah. I've had this discussing with others in different forms, where they are arguing that words have specific definitions..
I would go even further.. My take is that what you said is right, but also, what a given context (like "cooking") is can be very different for different people.. So even in situations where three is really only one meaning for a word (rare, but maybe "broccoli" is an example), the word is understood differently by different people because it has different connotations attached for everyone (e.g. "I love/hate it", "my grandparent used to cook it badly").
Word definitions are like the lowest common denominator consensus version of those individual meaning, but they are changing slightly all the time as people change. Dictionaries are just documenting that evolution, but are constantly playing catch-up.
I agree with you!
This is my pet peeve, and yet I know I'm wrong. I hate Miriam Webster for being a catalog of slang; it's not a dictionary, anymore. OED is the only English dictionary. Words have meanings, despite 20% of the population misunderstanding or intentionally redefining them.
And yet, and yet... it is not possible to argue against popular usage in natural languages. The best you can do is use a conlang that enforces strict no-evolution rules, such as the stance Esperanto has traditionally taken. Or learn Volpuk, a logic based language that strives to eliminate all ambiguity and achieves only being impossible to use outside of extremely narrow circumstances, because that's not how humans think.
This is one of the great internal conflicts in my world: natural language evolves and changes, and context alters meaning even further; and yet I desire reliable definitions and disambiguity, and shudder when I see MW has added "boomer: N. An older person."
Eh, I've come to love it. Life is messy. Complexity is everywhere, and understanding of anything interesting or meaningful is always partial. Language limits (or influences) what you are able to think clearly about, so why not just let language be unlimited?
To me, this take aligns with the Japanese concept of Wabi-sabi, which is about finding beauty in imperfection and decay.. Kind of a guiding aesthetic for me.