I Believe…
That the English language has gone to hell and people define words more by the way they feel about those words than by their actual meaning.
“I believe rape means…”
“I believe slave means…”
“I believe masochism means…”
Gah.
Shut the fuck up.
Words have real, actual, recorded, agreed upon by a higher power definitions .
My color blind buddy believes my pink hair is gray but, fuckin’ hell, he’s not RIGHT.
And neither are you if you’re using anything but dictionary definitions.
Your feelings may not be wrong – because we can’t define others emotions – but, by god, your feeling based definitions? They’re bunk, man. Bunk.
Certain words create certain feelings in each of us. The words, however, are still defined by their definition and not by the feelings they invoke.
You all realize we’d have way, way less issues communicating with each other if we all defined words as they ARE defined instead of making up wacky, emotion based definitions to suit ourselves, right?
This has been happening in a LOT of different places lately. (Lately as in the past 6 years or more.)
I once wrote an entire paragraph of jibberish, using words randomly, with no rhyme or reason for using them. Then asked the original poster if they could understand what I’d said, because of course, x word meant y, and a word meant g in one context but j in another.
That person didn’t even have the guts to tell me that I was a “meany pooh pooh head” for doing so, but exited the conversation after my post.
Really, words MEAN something. No does NOT equal yes (not even for Bill Clinton, or however he was defining “no” that day), black does NOT mean white, and the sky is NOT green! *sighs* Can you tell this is a pet peeve of mine?
I was just ranting to Master about this last night. My head almost exploded when someone on FL asked for the definition of cuckolding…”I thought it was this, but someone else told me it was this…” and the first commenter said something along the lines of, “It can be whatever you want it to be.”
WTF???? It’s a fucking WORD. WORDS exist because someone made it up and assigned it a definition! If you go to the dictionary…you will find a definition! It’s not open to interpretation or ambiguous!
Bah…people make my head hurt.
I suspect that it all originated with the touchy-feelie PC practice of substituting “feeling” for “think”. It’s easy to feel since it’s generally an autonomic response. Cogitation is an act which can be avoided. “I think” can be refuted. “I feel” is a specific statement that is true only for that person and in that moment and, thus, no refutation is possible. Or so I feel.
Mr. Upton Ogood
Being a writer by trade/choice/the sins of my father, I
1) have no choice but to agree, and
2) think I’m in love. :P
People throw blunt objects at me when I make the claim you just did. Here’s hoping you don’t have to duck!
Heh. Thank you!
*chuckles madly*
I love you.