this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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Is it really pedantry if the phrase makes no sense with the incorrect order
Its like "I could care less" - so you do care? Start making sense and I'll understand you. Words have meaning god damn it.
I see this one a lot, and it always says to me that people just use these phrases because other people use them, without ever thinking about what they mean.
If a phrase conveys the opposite of their literal meaning, and the speaker and the audience both know it, then it is pedantic. Choosing to derail whatever the topic is in favor of criticizing someone's understandability when everyone did understand them is pedantic.
I get it, I hate the way people use "literally". It's terrible, it's usually unneeded, and it just makes any actual correct use of literally have less impact. But I'm not gonna correct people who say it wrong, because I do know what they meant.
If they said "I could care less" and you're comfortable enough in your understanding of the conversation to know for a fact they actually mean they do not care about it, then they did make sense and you did understand them.
It's a problem, because I'm never quite sure if they're saying they care a little bit, and are using the phrase literally, or don't care, and are a moron.
That's quite a problem. You tend to get those by dividing things into black and white like that. I've known quite a few smart people that just still don't care about English being imperfect, and I've met a few dumb ones that care greatly about details like word choice and ignore the conversation to focus on errors.
Splitting the world between "people who do a thing you agree with" and "morons" is a choice, but its one I try to avoid as a rule.
And what if I am not comfortable enough in my understanding? When someone is hard to understand because of how non-standard their use of language is, it is a communication barrier, not just pedantry.
And of course literally has been used in both sense for hundreds of years.
It’s not like that at all. “I could care less” is just wrong. The phrase is “I couldn’t care less.” “I could care less” is more like “one and the same” or “for all intensive purposes.”
I think you got that mixed up there 🤔
Guess my brain couldn’t bear to type “all intensive purposes.”
Just because you’re being pedantic doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wrong to say it.
yes it really is
Idioms don't have to make literal sense. How do you feel about being "head over heels" about someone?
It should be heels over head, obviously. It probably was that way.
In my language, we say "neck over head"
I dont like it
/c/badlinguistics
I'm not sure what part doesn't make sense about the original
Alone it sounds normal but doesnt make sense in context because its supposed to be
Because the idiom is supposed to mean that you can't eat it and somehow still have it. The first implies you got cake and then were unable to eat it which doesnt make sense because thats literally the point of cake
Wikipedia:
Apparently have is supposed to be synonymous with "keep" but language has evolved
It can sound misleading but the second part doesn't actually mean the "having" at the first part has ended. It's not incorrect, it's just more confusing than the other way around.
I wouldn't say the language has changed. You either have something or don't. If you eat your cake you don't have it anymore
It’s only pedantry if you force others to do it your way.
I've always taken "I could care less" to be sarcastic. Like "It's technically possible, but quite unlikely."
Yeah if they cared enough to care less. Therefore they don't care enough to care less about something.
Therefore they couldn't care less, by your own logic
They could care less, they just don't care enough to want to care less.