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> There is fairly strong evidence that sleep deprivation can trigger or exasperate [sic] depression ... This is one I'm seeing more and more often. The word yo
by lutusp 13y ago
> There is fairly strong evidence that sleep deprivation can trigger or exasperate [sic] depression ...
This is one I'm seeing more and more often. The word you were after is "exacerbate". It's my hope that exasperate and exacerbate won't suffer the same fate as literally and figuratively, which now mean the same thing:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
- hdevalence 13y agoLiterally has been used to mean "in the strongest metaphorical sense" for close to 300 years, so I think you're beating a bit of a dead horse on that. Source: OED
- lutusp 13y agoIt's true that this is an old misuse. But IMHO it's still deplorable that a word and its antonym have merged into one.
- bglazer 13y agoAt what point does 'old misuse' become correct usage?
- lutusp 13y agoIt happens all the time. Take "decimate" as just one example of hundreds that come to mind. It once meant to reduce by one-tenth. But through common usage it has come to mean: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/decimate "to destroy a large number of (plants, animals, people, etc.)" But for exasperate as a replacement for exacerbate, that's more of a stretch. Not to say it won't happen.
- jaykru 13y agoWhat are some of the other "hundreds" of examples that come to mind?
- lutusp 13y agoWhat's my incentive to do this? I post an interesting and relevant fact, and get downvoted. The more interesting and relevant to the topic of discussion, the more downvotes in proportion. I prefer the company of adults.
- dllthomas 13y agoI don't think it's unreasonable to interpret "literally" as still meaning literally but the "strongest metaphoric sense" use an example of hyperbole. "Literally" is never used to mean "further from literal than you were thinking".
- tokenadult 13y agoHere on Hacker News there are a lot of people who use English as a second language. And there are a lot of hackers here who speak English as a native language who neglected their writing courses in high school or college in favor of more programming courses. So I am not surprised by spelling mistakes here, and only point them out when they are especially jarring and likely to lead to further misunderstanding.
- noir_lord 13y agoYour pointing out a trivial error that didn't significantly impact the intelligibility of my comment adds absolutely nothing to the conversation except demonstrating that you have superior English skills to mine (which I suspect was entirely the point). In addition if we are going to be rigourously accurate I will point out that merriam-webster also has exasperate down as "to make more grievous" as an obsolete meaning and since you seem to be concerned about changing the meaning of words over time we should perhaps allow the obsolete usage here.
- lutusp 13y ago> Your pointing out a trivial error that didn't significantly impact the intelligibility of my comment adds absolutely nothing to the conversation except demonstrating that you have superior English skills to mine (which I suspect was entirely the point). If you had posted a flawed math equation, or a defective computer program snippet, would you make the same objection to a correction? Would a mathematical correction offered in good faith merit this criticism, or would it be welcomed as a useful contribution? The answer is obvious -- spoken and written language is to a human what computer programming language is to a computer. Both should be open to correction. And for some reason I cannot fathom, one of them is welcomed and the other criticized, as though biological processors should be treated differently than silicon processors. > In addition if we are going to be rigourously accurate I will point out that merriam-webster ... Dictionaries don't prescribe, they describe. No matter how bizarre a word usage, if it appears in publications, it finds its way into the dictionary. So it's not a substantive argument to point out that a word meaning appears in a dictionary -- all of them end up there.
- benched 13y agoAw. And to think, you could have just thanked him!
- noir_lord 13y agoAs a rule I don't thank pedants I just avoid them.