177

Personally I love oranges but cant stand orange juice.

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[-] teuto@lemmy.teuto.icu 108 points 7 months ago

Decimate means 1/10th destroyed, lost, whatever. I don't care that the dictionary says that meaning is obsolete. I get that the meaning of words changes over time, but it has the prefix deci. 1/10th. You don't get to decide something that starts with 1/10th means near total even if it's a scary sounding word.

This is my anthill and I'm dying here.

[-] DagwoodIII@piefed.social 21 points 7 months ago

I read a Matt Helm spy thriller where the hero knows that his boss has been replaced by a double because the real guy would never use 'decimate' to mean 'eradicate.'

[-] quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 7 months ago

I have so many like that one. At some point in English one billion dropped its value three orders of magnitude and it is spreading to other languages. What now is called a billion it was one thousand million or a milliard.

More recently, one dude used the word hallucination for what AI do and everyone ran with it, there was already a word to describe that phenomenon, fabulation. Hallucination means something completely different.

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[-] AmidFuror@fedia.io 15 points 7 months ago

You only get to decide one tenth of what other people do.

[-] railway692@piefed.zip 12 points 7 months ago

Does English have sufficiently scary words that are also etymologically correct?

A population being halvsied just doesn't hit the same, you know?

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[-] NegentropicBoy@lemmy.world 53 points 7 months ago

"Road Works" usually means it doesn't.

[-] AmidFuror@fedia.io 25 points 7 months ago

The "End Construction" signs you sometimes see on the side of the road aren't actually protesting growth.

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[-] DigDoug@lemmy.world 48 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

A kilobyte is 1024 bytes. Yes, I know "kilo" means 1000 - I don't care since it's obvious from context.

Back in the day, using base-10 prefixes for base-2 stuff was considered fine. 1024 is close enough to 1000, after all. It only changed when some dickhead realised that, by insisting that a kilobyte (and the bigger units) was 1000 bytes, they could sell you less hard drive space without lowering the number on the box.

If you don't believe me, look at your RAM. Nobody's ever sold RAM by the "gibibyte".

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[-] justdaveisfine@piefed.social 37 points 7 months ago

There should be more mature games.

I don't mean like sex games, I mean like games intended for adults that can have mature content and mature stories without it being heavily watered down.

Games should have as much leeway as the film or book industry when it comes to mature content - Though I guess that's getting murky too lately.

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[-] setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 35 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Probably stereotypical, but I find well done steaks to be a total waste.

I rarely cook steak, but when I do I go to a butcher and get something quality and fresh. Normally I don't care how other people enjoy their food, but when I take the effort to get quality steak and someone at a family get together asks me to cook until the steak is grey in the center it just deflates me. Logically I know that if everyone is happy with their food it doesn't matter, but personally having to mangle a steak so it has the taste of ground beef just goes against every cooking instinct I have.

I've learned that when certain people are coming to a holiday cookout to just cook burgers or BBQ instead. Everyone is just as happy with what they get.

[-] DagwoodIII@piefed.social 26 points 7 months ago

I consider myself openminded and tolerant.

I once heard a fellow say he was from Minnesota and he thought ketchup was too spicy.

Outwardly I stayed calm but in my heart I wanted to burn the heretic.

[-] f1error@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago

I'm in Minnesota, and I can confirm there are people who think ketchup is spicy.

The first time I encountered "ketchup is spicy/a hot sauce," I thought it was a joke. Then I also learned that there are truly bland people who think salt and pepper is "too much".

I live in a very weird state.

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[-] Horsey@lemmy.world 33 points 7 months ago

People shouldn’t be able to be told what color to paint their house. More people should experiment with wild colors inside and out.

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[-] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 32 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

People rip on US electricity standards all the time, from voltage, via frequency, to the NEMA plugs, and for good reasons. But the most disgusting thing about it all is this:

US breaker panels are fugly. Sure, they work just as well as those from the rest of the world, but they're aesthetically displeasing.

Two representative pictures I found of an average panel just now;

US:

EU:

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[-] railway692@piefed.zip 20 points 7 months ago

This is the kind of unimportant but fascinating thing I wish we had a community for.

Just... hundreds of people around the world posting their breaker panels.

[-] owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca 12 points 7 months ago

Wait... what do they look like elsewhere? They're the same where I am in Canada...

[-] Truscape 11 points 7 months ago

US and Canada largely have the same power generation/delivery standards.

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[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 28 points 7 months ago

Sometimes a game being a little unbalanced can make it more fun.

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[-] DigDoug@lemmy.world 28 points 7 months ago

Pineapple on pizza is fine. If you don't like it, you don't have to eat it.

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[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 27 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Latin root words that end in -or should use the suffix -trix when applied to women. So a woman aviator is aviatrix, administrator is administratrix, etc.

[-] crimsonpoodle@pawb.social 24 points 7 months ago
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[-] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 16 points 7 months ago

Contractrix sounds like a supervillain

[-] mangaskahn@lemmy.world 15 points 7 months ago

A supervillainess

[-] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 12 points 7 months ago

We don't need gender specific words for things that aren't gender specific. Does the aviator use their penis for flying the plane? If not why do you need to tell me with their title if they have a penis?

I hate the word widower. It sounds like a verb. A widower kills married men and makes widows. Widow works fine for everyone.

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[-] Strider@lemmy.world 27 points 7 months ago

Quantum leap means the tiniest jump and not at all what it's (internationally) used for.

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[-] fiendishplan@lemmy.world 25 points 7 months ago

Horsepower is a stupid way to measure how powerful a car is. What is this the 1800s?

[-] Maven@piefed.blahaj.zone 17 points 7 months ago

Its not even accurate to its name! Horses have more than 1 horse power!

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[-] Zier@fedia.io 21 points 7 months ago

Dear Australia, I utterly love you, but please tell me how many vowels do you need to shove into the word No? It's almost become the longest word in Australian English.

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[-] svcg 19 points 7 months ago

Steak is overrated. I'd take a smash burger over a steak 9 times out of 10, and that 1 time out of 10 will just be because I'm in the mood for peppercorn sauce.

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[-] ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world 18 points 7 months ago

If you’ve never worked on a holiday you shouldn’t be allowed to go to stores and restaurants on holidays.

[-] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 18 points 7 months ago

There is only one R in the word familiar.

Stop saying fermilliar.

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[-] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 18 points 7 months ago

Folding laundry is a complete waste of time and effort. If it's been through the wash it's clean, it's not going to be any cleaner just because you spent half an hour doing laundry origami.

[-] tensorpudding@lemmy.world 30 points 7 months ago

Folding laundry is supposed to be to prevent wrinkles isn't it?

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[-] Gerudo@lemmy.zip 13 points 7 months ago

I've never been under the impression folding laundry makes it cleaner? Or am I not understanding the point.

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[-] ieGod@lemmy.zip 17 points 7 months ago

It's "by accident" not "on accident", you uneducated fools.

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[-] Wiz@midwest.social 16 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

People pronouncing processes (and biases) like they rhyme with "chimpanzees", instead of "addresses".

Since the English language has done words that borrow the Greek and make an -eez sound, like crisis to crises, people seem to think process is Greekified. It doesn't follow the same pattern at all.

English is hard enough as it is without inventing extra rules to try to make us sound smarter. Meanwhile, I try to de-Greekify the language with octopuses, syllabuses, and cactuses - all valid plurals in English.

Source: Bachelor's degree in English

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[-] Hylactor@sopuli.xyz 16 points 7 months ago

This verges on actually mattering, but knives on magnetic strips should be blade down.

Pros:

  • when grabbing the knife you are holding it in the safest way possible automatically with the blade pointed down rather than blade up like fucking Chucky.

  • If you botch grabbing it, it falls away from your hand/arm rather than toward/on top of it.

  • the handles hook over the strip and are more secure

  • the handles are all on the same plane, and again if you dislodge a separate knife unexpectedly it falls away from your hand/arm

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[-] SnotFlickerman 16 points 7 months ago

Limeade is better than lemonade by a country mile.

With the caveat that both store bought limeade and lemonade are absolute trash compared to fresh squeezed.

Fresh squeezed limeade is just divine.

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[-] MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 15 points 7 months ago

Peeling vegetables is such a waste of food, nearly all vitamins and minerals are stored in the skin.

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[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 15 points 7 months ago

D&D is not as good as it is popular. It's a very idiosyncratic game that's mostly focused on a particular kind of play, but people treat it like it's a general purpose tool.

Clearly people can have fun with it, and that's what really matters. I'm still convinced many of them would have more, easier, cheaper, fun if they picked up a different game.

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[-] DigDoug@lemmy.world 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The use of 'literally' as hyperbole is fine.

The sentences "I laughed so much I died" and "I laughed so much I literally died" mean exactly the same thing, but only one of them will have people respond with tHeN hOw ArE yOu TaLkInG tO mE iF yOu'Re DeAd?

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[-] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 12 points 7 months ago

Island has an 's' in it. This was started as a stylistic choice to make the word look more Latin despite the fact that the English word has no Latin roots.

This is proof enough that English is a stupid language for the unwashed masses. There are no rules, all that matters is how it is used and understood. Anyone who tries argue that "literally can not mean figuratively" or that gif has to be pronouced a specific way is an idiot trying to force logic into a system that has none. Don't waste your time trying to explain that you know the only true and proper rules to Calvinball.

That 's,' that's what broke me.

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[-] TomasEkeli@programming.dev 12 points 7 months ago

The word "utilize" should almost always be changed to "use".

And, people who cannot sing should not sing on stage.

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[-] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 12 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I wish it was socially acceptable to interest-dump someone and for them to do the same to you.

Just getting a 5-10 minute lecture deep into a topic that someone is passionate about is fun and educational! Much better than trying to make small talk or talk about the 3 common topics at your workplace (at mine it is local tv, energy spending/taxes, and cars), which is often sports. Then you get to learn about other people's interests too!

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[-] paraplu@piefed.social 11 points 7 months ago

Oranges are the worst kind of orange. They taste quite good, but if I need to use tools to eat it, I want something at least as good as a grapefruit.

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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
177 points (100.0% liked)

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