2 ms·

I have been ridiculing people for years trying to defuse an argument by saying "it's just a matter of semantics" 'that for once in your miserable excuse for an

• adhesive_wombat 4y ago
  I'm glad it's not just me that gets wound up by that. I wonder if it's getting confused (rather ironically!) with semiotics. Saying that it's just a matter of the words used in the argument seems closer to the mark. Or, maybe, they think it's a fancy way to say "matter of opinion".
• avgcorrection 4y ago
  “I can’t parse this” What they usually mean is not that they can’t comprehend the grammar. They usually mean that they don’t understand what it means. Butchered technical term.
  • yccs27 4y ago
    Relatively often "I can't parse this" is still about the grammar, more specifically when it's not clear what words belong together. As an example from the article, "certified community behavioral health clinic" is a single token, but if you don't know the term, you won't parse it correctly. In other cases a sentence might contain technical terms as adjectives/adverbs where it's not clear which word they modify. Or possibly the content is just so confusing that you begin to doubt you parsed everything correctly...
    • dsr_ 4y ago
      Worse, improper nouns cause people to be unaware that they have failed to parse them in the manner intended. Human languages are imprecise; communication is often difficult.