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One a side note, I thought of a joke where his "vanilla startup" would be far from a "vanilla" startup. And that got me curious as to why the adjective vanilla

One a side note, I thought of a joke where his "vanilla startup" would be far from a "vanilla" startup. And that got me curious as to why the adjective vanilla refers to anything plain. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vanilla https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vanilla "For lexicographers, vanilla has more flavor than chocolate, because it adds a tasty synonym for plain to the English menu. The noun vanilla was first served up in 1662, but it took almost 200 years for its adjective use to become established for things, like ice and sugar, flavored with vanilla. By the 1970s vanilla was perceived as being the plain flavor of the ice-cream world, and people began using the word itself to describe anything plain, ordinary, or conventional."

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quadrangle 8y ago
FWIW, I think it's fair to push back on bad use of language even as I'm not prescriptive in general. Using "vanilla" to mean "plain" is just wrong and bad. It's possible to make plain, unflavored ice-cream. Vanilla is obviously a real flavor.
- ams6110 8y ago
  I think that ship has sailed, since the meaning has been in use for almost 50 years now. As someone who can't stand the use of "they" as a singular pronoun, I also understand fights against the evolution of language are battles that I won't win.
  - thechao 8y ago
    “They” as a singular, gender neutral, pronoun dates back to the 14th c. Practically every word you use postdates its use that way. The use of “literally” to mean “figuratively” is nearly as old.
    - filleduchaos 8y ago
      And I'm willing to bet they use the singular they quite often without even realizing it
    - somecontext 8y ago
      In case anyone was curious, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/literally https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/literally states R"(This type of usage is common in informal speech ("she was literally in floods of tears") and is attested since 1769.)"
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      > The use of “literally” to mean “figuratively” is nearly as old. Please please don't say that. It is not being used to mean that. It is being used in a figurative way to mean "very". This is an ironic but relatively minor shift. It's in no danger of becoming its own opposite.
      - xmonkee 8y ago
        It’s no different than saying “really”. As in, “I’m really ready to kill myself”. Of course, it doesn’t mean “in reality”. It’s an intensifier, just like “literally”
  - amha 8y ago
    The ship may have sailed, but we can still turn it around! I like the idea of recapturing "vanilla" as not meaning "plain."
  - Camillo 8y ago
    If you want to watch helplessly as a word is ruined in real time, I recommend "iconic". I'm not even sure what it's supposed to mean any more: in informal speech it seems to be a synonym of "awesome", which by now has devolved into another word for "good".
  - quadrangle 8y ago
    Singular they is a totally different issue. Vanilla = plain is a metaphor. Singular they is a syntax issue. These are processed totally differently in our minds/brains. Both we come to accept with enough usage and good attitude, but they have very different significance in language. Most people who don't start knowing singular they find it a true syntax error, the sort like a P600 response in an EEG test. It's deeply irksome. But then with familiarity, it goes away. Metaphors don't have such a deep language processing issue, they just have semantic meaning that we accept or not and our objections live at a far more intellectual level.
- mc32 8y ago
  Yes and no. I mean, a "regular" pizza is understood to be a cheese pizza, the default or base pizza. I think vanilla ice-cream is the regular pizza of the ice-cream world.
  - emilfihlman 8y ago
    Wtf, no Finn would agree on a "regular" pizza existing.
    - Filligree 8y ago
      Salmiakki pizza. Checkmate, Finn.
  - quadrangle 8y ago
    A cheese pizza is a PLAIN pizza, just the core ingredients with nothing extra. A plain donut or plain bagel are the things without any extras. A plain cake is rare but is a cake without extra flavors or frosting or whatever. When it just has chocolate even, people still call it a "chocolate cake" and maybe "plain chocolate cake" but rarely or never simply "plain cake". And because the default for cake is to be chocolate, nobody would be crazy enough to say "vanilla cake" to refer to unadorned chocolate cake. So the use of vanilla to mean regular/plain isn't a lost cause! It's worth criticizing to not lose its real meaning. The pizza analogy really would work like this: say that pepperoni pizza was so common, everyone had that or more complex things and nobody ever had a simple cheese pizza. Then imagine people start using "pepperoni" to mean plain/regular. Metaphorically, they'd start saying "eh, that one night stand — the sex was just pepperoni". Okay, so, upon reconsideration, it's not "plain" or "regular" or "popular" that vanilla refers to. It's original, as in the first thing that seems default and was around before other stuff. These metaphors are complex. But I happen to think we should notice when we use metaphors and consider their meaning, question them, use them thoughtfully…
zymhan 8y ago
> why the adjective vanilla refers to anything plain https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-09-18 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-09-18

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quadrangle 8y ago

FWIW, I think it's fair to push back on bad use of language even as I'm not prescriptive in general. Using "vanilla" to mean "plain" is just wrong and bad. It's possible to make plain, unflavored ice-cream. Vanilla is obviously a real flavor.

ams6110 8y ago
I think that ship has sailed, since the meaning has been in use for almost 50 years now. As someone who can't stand the use of "they" as a singular pronoun, I also understand fights against the evolution of language are battles that I won't win.
- thechao 8y ago
  “They” as a singular, gender neutral, pronoun dates back to the 14th c. Practically every word you use postdates its use that way. The use of “literally” to mean “figuratively” is nearly as old.
  - filleduchaos 8y ago
    And I'm willing to bet they use the singular they quite often without even realizing it
  - somecontext 8y ago
    In case anyone was curious, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/literally https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/literally states R"(This type of usage is common in informal speech ("she was literally in floods of tears") and is attested since 1769.)"
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    > The use of “literally” to mean “figuratively” is nearly as old. Please please don't say that. It is not being used to mean that. It is being used in a figurative way to mean "very". This is an ironic but relatively minor shift. It's in no danger of becoming its own opposite.
    - xmonkee 8y ago
      It’s no different than saying “really”. As in, “I’m really ready to kill myself”. Of course, it doesn’t mean “in reality”. It’s an intensifier, just like “literally”
- amha 8y ago
  The ship may have sailed, but we can still turn it around! I like the idea of recapturing "vanilla" as not meaning "plain."
- Camillo 8y ago
  If you want to watch helplessly as a word is ruined in real time, I recommend "iconic". I'm not even sure what it's supposed to mean any more: in informal speech it seems to be a synonym of "awesome", which by now has devolved into another word for "good".
- quadrangle 8y ago
  Singular they is a totally different issue. Vanilla = plain is a metaphor. Singular they is a syntax issue. These are processed totally differently in our minds/brains. Both we come to accept with enough usage and good attitude, but they have very different significance in language. Most people who don't start knowing singular they find it a true syntax error, the sort like a P600 response in an EEG test. It's deeply irksome. But then with familiarity, it goes away. Metaphors don't have such a deep language processing issue, they just have semantic meaning that we accept or not and our objections live at a far more intellectual level.
mc32 8y ago
Yes and no. I mean, a "regular" pizza is understood to be a cheese pizza, the default or base pizza. I think vanilla ice-cream is the regular pizza of the ice-cream world.
- emilfihlman 8y ago
  Wtf, no Finn would agree on a "regular" pizza existing.
  - Filligree 8y ago
    Salmiakki pizza. Checkmate, Finn.
- quadrangle 8y ago
  A cheese pizza is a PLAIN pizza, just the core ingredients with nothing extra. A plain donut or plain bagel are the things without any extras. A plain cake is rare but is a cake without extra flavors or frosting or whatever. When it just has chocolate even, people still call it a "chocolate cake" and maybe "plain chocolate cake" but rarely or never simply "plain cake". And because the default for cake is to be chocolate, nobody would be crazy enough to say "vanilla cake" to refer to unadorned chocolate cake. So the use of vanilla to mean regular/plain isn't a lost cause! It's worth criticizing to not lose its real meaning. The pizza analogy really would work like this: say that pepperoni pizza was so common, everyone had that or more complex things and nobody ever had a simple cheese pizza. Then imagine people start using "pepperoni" to mean plain/regular. Metaphorically, they'd start saying "eh, that one night stand — the sex was just pepperoni". Okay, so, upon reconsideration, it's not "plain" or "regular" or "popular" that vanilla refers to. It's original, as in the first thing that seems default and was around before other stuff. These metaphors are complex. But I happen to think we should notice when we use metaphors and consider their meaning, question them, use them thoughtfully…

zymhan 8y ago

> why the adjective vanilla refers to anything plain https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-09-18 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-09-18