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The word is skunked at this point. Using it guarantees that readers are going to have to pause and refer to the context, and depending on the context it may not
by djur 2y ago
The word is skunked at this point. Using it guarantees that readers are going to have to pause and refer to the context, and depending on the context it may not even be possible to confidently disambiguate. Luckily both meanings have ample synonyms.
- Angostura 2y ago… I’m entirely nonplussed by your use of ‘skunked’.
- notnaut 2y agoWhat’s awesome about words is we can just say whatever bullshit we want and if anyone understands and repeats it, bam, new words! They don’t start off in the dictionary!
- stavros 2y agoI love "anon" for that reason. "I will be there anon!" If anyone complains about me being there either too early or too late, or neither, I point them to the dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anon https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anon It can either mean "now", "soon", or "later".
- seabass-labrax 2y agoOh, how interesting - I had a personal 'eggcorn' interpretation that it was an elision of "and on" (which also makes sense in many contexts), and never connected it to the word "anon" in writing!
- lupire 2y agoWorks the same if you don't say "anon" at all.
- djur 2y agoIt's the term Bryan Garner uses for words that are inconsistent in meaning in a way that makes them difficult to use effectively: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunked_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunked_term I'm not sure what his origin was for the term, but "skunked" as an adjective to me indicates a beer that was spoiled by exposure to light and/or heat. It's gone off.
- allknowingfrog 2y agoIt's a perfectly cromulent word.
- mnw21cam 2y agoI think it should join "billion" in never being ever used again due to its ambiguity.
- kimbernator 2y agoIt just doesn't have the same ring to call someone a "milliardare"
- Sohcahtoa82 2y agoHow 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion
- paulddraper 2y agoFor the last several decades, every English speaking country has used the short billion (1e9).
- jamiek88 2y agoYep, even the BBC surrendered to the Americanism.
- seabass-labrax 2y agoAccording to Wikipedia's summary of the situation, the French are to blame for the ambiguity - no surprises there! ;) But if we're going to avoid Americanisms, the better way is simply to use the word 'milliard', which makes perfect, unambiguous sense in any language.
- lupire 2y agoExcept that it's a terrible word because milli means thousand, and ard just means a grammatical modification. So all that accomplishes is conflating thousand with million with billion. (Of course "million" is already a conflation of "thousand"!)