Language is always changing. At one point ‘an apron’ was ‘a napron’ while words like ‘literally’ are no longer literally literal. What are some language battles that have been lost in living memory and what are some others you predict will soon occur?
Edit: Non-english examples very welcome!
Unique coming to just mean unusual.
Loose and lose might as well be the same word these days. Drives me up a damn wall.
That and “POV” doesn’t mean what it used to mean anymore. Also drives me up a wall.
Is it not “point of view”?
Breathe and breath too…
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People no longer double-space after sentences. No one cares that further compares metaphorical distance and farther compares physical distance. Most people seem to think that joining two independent clauses with a comma (a comma splice) is just fine. Things are now done on accident instead of by accident. Compute used to be something you did; now, it’s something you rent. People seem to have given up on less being used for uncountable things and fewer for countable things. Now they just use less for everything. People these days are enamored ‘by’ something instead of with it (or of it, for our British friends).
From my cold dead hands!!
Us that technically a missing Oxford comma, or just a missing comma?
The grandma quote is a missing comma in general, but there’s another reply with a missing Oxford Comma.
Although punctuation is waning, I’m willing to spend the time to use it.
The rich couple, me and ScarJo donated ten thousand dollars to a local charity school.
Ending sentences with propositions, and getting them jumbled around. My work does it in their advertisements and i cry every time.
“See what classes you can register for.” Or modifying it to be worse; “see what classes you can register for fast”
I suppose the word “boomer” has changed meaning very quickly. It rarely gets used anymore to refer to actual boomers (people born just after WW2) and instead now can refer either vaguely to anyone older than 30, or anyone with an antiquated/problematic notion of social norms.
I miss double spaces after periods.
LUXURY!BACKINMYDAYWEDIDNTHAVESPACES.DONTGETMESTARTEDONTHISLOWERCASENONSENSE
From my perspective, literally being used for emphasis does not actually change its meaning, it’s simply hyperbole.
If you complain that you’ve been “waiting for hours”, even though it’s been 45 minutes, that doesn’t change the meaning of “hours”, you’re just exaggerating.
Hyperbole is a stylistic element; style is a completely different level of language than grammar/spelling/semantics (word meanings). As another example of style, ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically correct but stylistically not recommended.
The OED actually includes the definition of literally as being what used to be the opposite of its definition nowadays, so I think that it does count as an auto-antonym (a word that means both itself, and the opposite of itself)
The one that bothers me most (heard a lot in the software dev world) is when people say process-eez instead of processes, even if it is technically a word now, like ain’t
i’ve never learnt to use tildes in spanish lol i mean i know some rules for that but i just never cared, most people dont use them while texting unless the corrector adds it.
would of literally their
Literally Literally
