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Japanese monks and emperors kept meticulous records of cherry blossom festivals for 1,200 years. They accidentally built the world's longest climate dataset (cdn.bsky.app)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/mildlyinteresting@lemmy.world
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[–] 1 point 7 months ago* (3 children)

All that is fine and dandy, just like "awesome" and other examples, but when there are more descriptive words, I still think it's better to use them, also in favor of literacy. Why stamp everything with "accident" when you can use better words from a more expansive vocabulary? These are journalist writers ffs. They do this for a living. I'm merely disappointed. [Edit: huh. I guess there's no article here. 😳 Never mind about expectations, I suppose.]

I agree with you that you should respect all meanings of a word but sometimes it becomes ambiguous, as in this case (1-b is, too, applicable), and sometimes there are just more descriptive, seemingly forgotten words to choose from, also as in this case.

I'm also on your side regarding "literally", from the tail end of your comment. I don't use it as an intensifier. It's stupid. But I reluctantly accept that language is malleable.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    I don't know what you mean by more descriptive. The only meanings here that are necessary are "by chance" and "unexpected".

    The word 'uninentional' would convey a similar meaning, it'd be fine, but there are situations out there where it doesn't work.

    "Their meeting was entirely unintentional."

    By whose intent? If we're speaking from the perspective of fate, then this is actually a bad choice.

    "Their meeting was entirely inadvertent."

    I'm... not sure what this would even mean. I would probably assume this came from a 17-year-old who got their hands on a thesaurus.

    "Their meeting was entirely by chance."

    This obviously works. I think it lacks a bit of whimsy. Maybe it trades one whimsy for another. Accidental means "by chance," though, you'd only be trading the word for its definition.

    but sometimes it becomes ambiguous, as in this case (1-b is, too, applicable),

    1-b is not applicable. The outcome of this accident is a fortunate one, so a misfortunate interpretation would be incorrect. I mean, this is why it feels odd to you, is it not?

    I can only assume that what happened is you read the sentence and thought it would end "They accidentally shit their pants," or something, and were surprised it didn't. That didn't happen to me. And even if it had, I could have recovered.

    I'm also on your side regarding "literally" [...] I don't use it as an intensifier. It's stupid.

    Eh heh~ This is not the side that I'm on.

    Knowing different sides of a word, or in this case adding new ones, allows you to affect your speech in different ways to say different things about yourself. If you're being formal, then you wouldn't use the intensifier variant of literally, or at least you would be more precise about it, but if you wanted to seem more street, or maybe youthful, then literally might be a great choice. Think about the power this gives you when writing dialogue for characters, or when speaking to certain demographics.

    In my view, 'literally' getting another definition only increases the number of toys in my toybox.

    I did say earlier that I defend slang.

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