Linguistic ambiguities and nonsense phrases etc

IdleRich

IdleRich
I heard someone today saying the phrase "one of a kind" which always fascinates me in that its meaning in general usage is that someone or something is unique. What it literally says is the exact opposite, I mean if there is a kind and a person is one of that kind then they are not unique are they? They are similar to (if not the same as) the other members of that kind.

Another one is "a poor workman blames his tools" - which is used to say that someone who complains about their equipment must be a poor workman. This is in fact the converse of what the phrase literally says. If A = poor workman and B = blames his tools then the phrase can be rendered A => B when people intend to say B => A.

Another is "the exception that proves the rule" which is a weird one, people use it when someone has shown a counter-example which defeats their argument to somehow claim that it makes their argument stronger, which is obviously bollocks. I think that comes from a misunderstanding of the word "prove" which is here being used in the old sense meaning to test to destruction. In other words this phrase has, over time, become corrupted to mean the exact opposite of what it did originally.

As for ambiguities I like that one when someone is described as "deceptively tall" - does that mean that someone is short but deceptively looks tall, or that someone is tall but deceptively so in that they look short? Well I looked it up and it seems there is no agreement, it could be either of those things.

I think bi-monthly is similar... does it mean twice a month or every two months?

So why do these ambiguities and outright contradictions persist. How did they come about and why? And what else is there out there?
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
I heard someone today saying the phrase "one of a kind" which always fascinates me in that its meaning in general usage is that someone or something is unique. What it literally says is the exact opposite, I mean if there is a kind and a person is one of that kind then they are not unique are they? They are similar to (if not the same as) the other members of that kind.

Another one is "a poor workman blames his tools" - which is used to say that someone who complains about their equipment must be a poor workman. This is in fact the converse of what the phrase literally says. If A = poor workman and B = blames his tools then the phrase can be rendered A => B when people intend to say B => A.

Another is "the exception that proves the rule" which is a weird one, people use it when someone has shown a counter-example which defeats their argument to somehow claim that it makes their argument stronger, which is obviously bollocks. I think that comes from a misunderstanding of the word "prove" which is here being used in the old sense meaning to test to destruction. In other words this phrase has, over time, become corrupted to mean the exact opposite of what it did originally.

As for ambiguities I like that one when someone is described as "deceptively tall" - does that mean that someone is short but deceptively looks tall, or that someone is tall but deceptively so in that they look short? Well I looked it up and it seems there is no agreement, it could be either of those things.

I think bi-monthly is similar... does it mean twice a month or every two months?

So why do these ambiguities and outright contradictions persist. How did they come about and why? And what else is there out there?
'Kind' there meant 'character' or 'condition' rather than 'set of things with a given character' (but, anyway, one can have sets with only one member)
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
'Kind' there meant 'character' or 'condition' rather than 'set of things with a given character' (but, anyway, one can have sets with only one member)
Yes you can have sets with only one member, but you can also have sets with more than one member, so that doesn't rescue it.
If the saying limited it to sets of one member then yes it would be fine but for that the saying would have to be "He's one of a kind - and I'm specifically talking about a kind of which there is only one representative" then it wouldn't be so catchy, and the first bit would be redundant, you would only need to say "He's from a kind of which there is only one example" - which I think was kinda my original point to start with.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Have your cake and eat it"
What's the problem there? I always took that to mean that if you eat your cake then you won't have it any more so "you can't have your cake and eat it" means you have to choose between eating and keeping.

One that bugs is in UK we say "I couldn't care less" whereas in the US they tend to say "I could care less" which.... I mean is it supposed to be sarcastic or is it just totally wrong?
 

mixed_biscuits

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Yes you can have sets with only one member, but you can also have sets with more than one member, so that doesn't rescue it.
If the saying limited it to sets of one member then yes it would be fine but for that the saying would have to be "He's one of a kind - and I'm specifically talking about a kind of which there is only one representative" then it wouldn't be so catchy, and the first bit would be redundant, you would only need to say "He's from a kind of which there is only one example" - which I think was kinda my original point to start with.
One instance of a class, in programming terms (one can have a class without it being subsequently instantiated)
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
So you're saying that the meaning of "kind" has changed as with proof above. But what does it mean to say "one of a property"? Suppose green is the property, I don't understand the phrase "one of a green" - i mean if you said "It's one of the things that are green" then we're back to the group of items. I really don't get it.
 

mixed_biscuits

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What's the problem there? I always took that to mean that if you eat your cake then you won't have it any more so "you can't have your cake and eat it" means you have to choose between eating and keeping.

One that bugs is in UK we say "I couldn't care less" whereas in the US they tend to say "I could care less" which.... I mean is it supposed to be sarcastic or is it just totally wrong?
'and' doesn't entail strict simultaneity*: one wouldn't expect a Bed and Breakfast to serve breakfast in bed.

* But as the phrase originally was "have your cake and eat it _too_", maybe the 'and' was deemed sufficient (along with the trace memory of the original in the interlocutor) to imply it in that case
 

mixed_biscuits

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So you're saying that the meaning of "kind" has changed as with proof above. But what does it mean to say "one of a property"? Suppose green is the property, I don't understand the phrase "one of a green" - i mean if you said "It's one of the things that are green" then we're back to the group of items. I really don't get it.
Group of items works if one thinks of a group as a possibly purely theoretical class (ie. placeholder template for things with a set of properties)
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Nah explain your property claim first, I want to know what you're getting at there, I'm really not understanding it at all.
 

mixed_biscuits

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Same process of communicative economy + shared memory of original phrase drops the 'n't' in "couldn't care less" - one might imagine eventually abbreviating "could care less" to "cuculess" which would only confirm that grammatical parsing has become inappropriate as the new formulation, after either transformation, basically acts as if it were a single word.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
A related phenomenon is sayings that get misquoted, or only partially quoted, and end up being used to mean the opposite of what the original saying was supposed to mean.

Like "blood is thicker than water", which people use to mean, in some vague sort of way, that the bonds of blood-relatedness are strong. But the original saying is "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb", which means that relationships formed by choice are stronger than those of blood relations.

Another one that comes up so often in the context of police brutality or corruption as to have become a cliché is "a few bad apples", as if to imply it's not such a big problem. But the saying is that "one bad apple spoils the whole barrel", which means that it very much is a problem.

Then there's "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps", which is supposed to imply, oh I dunno, some guff about doing well through hard work after starting out in a lowly position, but was originally meant to imply something that's completely impossible, which it obviously would be.
 
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mixed_biscuits

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If the skill of the workman is determined on a case by case basis depending only on the work just done (or if a good workman can only do good work, by definition), then blaming tools is a sure sign of bad workmanship:

1656487433669.png

If workman quality is a property intrinsic to the workman and all blame tools if a job has gone badly, then a tool-blamer is more likely to be a generally good workman, given a large enough population of good workmen, relative to bad ones:

1656487405763.png

If good workmen never blame their tools (even when a job goes badly), then blaming tools indicates a bad workman:

1656487386947.png

I think the phrase is most likely to mean the first scenario.

Tip for bad workman: if you don't want to be thought bad after a bad job in the absence of any evidence other than whether you blame your tools or not, don't blame your tools!
 
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jenks

thread death
Another that I have noticed is people are saying 'i was so angry i was spitting feathers!' which has mixed up two things:
  • I was so angry I was spitting nails
  • I was so thirsty i was spitting feathers.

It annoys me when people get these things wrong and i teach language change and i know i am being irrational but dammit, a man must have some standards.
 

mixed_biscuits

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Another that I have noticed is people are saying 'i was so angry i was spitting feathers!' which has mixed up two things:
  • I was so angry I was spitting nails
  • I was so thirsty i was spitting feathers.

It annoys me when people get these things wrong and i teach language change and i know i am being irrational but dammit, a man must have some standards.
Never heard of either :(
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Another that I have noticed is people are saying 'i was so angry i was spitting feathers!' which has mixed up two things:
  • I was so angry I was spitting nails
  • I was so thirsty i was spitting feathers.

It annoys me when people get these things wrong and i teach language change and i know i am being irrational but dammit, a man must have some standards.
Yeah, it's one of those sayings that people just take for granite.
 
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