281–290 of 337 posts
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How is "billion" ambiguous? Does it mean something other than 1,000,000,000? EDIT: Apparently in some cultures, it means a million million, ie, 1,000,000,000,000, or what most people would call "trillion". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion
For the last several decades, every English speaking country has used the short billion (1e9).
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That begs the question, what will you do about it?
I’m fairly nonplussed at what has happened to “begging the question” - its usage now is an inversion of its original philosophical meaning as a form of fallacy. It’s common usage is a way of saying “the question arises”.
"This begs the question of why X Y Z" is just a shortening of "this [thing you said] begs [that] the question [be asked] of why X Y Z".
I think the only reason there's any discussion about it at all is because the sorts of people who are likely to use the idiom of "begging the question" with regard to logic, are the sort of people who enjoy being pedantic about other people's language, and this presents an opportunity to do so.
You could say I'm plussed about the whole thing. It brings up a whelming amount of emotion in me.
As a non native English speaker, nonplus is among the words and phases I try my best not to use. The others include biweekly, next Tuesday, twelve o'clock, etc.
However that then all falls apart once we have US based folks in the conversation, especially if one of them used 'biweekly'!
But because of how it sounds, the meaning basically morphed into “seven-ish”.
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I’m fairly nonplussed at what has happened to “begging the question” - its usage now is an inversion of its original philosophical meaning as a form of fallacy. It’s common usage is a way of saying “the question arises”.
I take objection to the characterization of "begging the question" having a changed/incorrect meaning. I assert that the "original philosophical meaning" is the fad idiom, and the common usage is a true parsing of the words unrelated to the idiom. "This begs the question of why X Y Z" is just a shortening of "this [thing you said] begs [that] the question [be asked] of why X Y Z". I think the only reason there's any…
Apparently, “several” does not in fact originally come from “around seven”, but came from “sever” (as in to fork/split/break), so it originally meant “2 or more”. But because of how it sounds, the meaning basically morphed into “seven-ish”.
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> I'd have no objection to a singular gender-neutral word (which unfortunately doesn't exist in English). Yes it does. "He" is the gender neutral expression in English and has been since forever. It's just that politically correct people get bent out of shape about it.
It so weird that ships and boats somehow are female and are referred to using the word "she", when neutral gender "it" exists.
Referring to them as women (hence 'she') is simply an affectation.
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> Supposedly this has happened with "literally". Allegedly also with "factoid", which means "something which resembles a fact" versus the misuse of "a small fact". It's frustrating because it's like watching people declare that aster-oids are actual stars , except smaller. Or that human-oids and andr-oids are small people.
Finally! Finally I’ve found a fellow factoid correct / original meaning aficionado! I ceased to die on the hill but it still makes me twitch.
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I take objection to the characterization of "begging the question" having a changed/incorrect meaning. I assert that the "original philosophical meaning" is the fad idiom, and the common usage is a true parsing of the words unrelated to the idiom. "This begs the question of why X Y Z" is just a shortening of "this [thing you said] begs [that] the question [be asked] of why X Y Z". I think the only reason there's any…
You might be correct, but it begs the question: where are your citations for that?