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by D_Alex
4685 days ago
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It may be ineffective prescriptivism. The usefulness is in the fact that we should have a word that unambiguously means "in a strict sense, without exaggeration". What is kind of useless is a word that can mean some thing or its opposite, and there is no way to tell from the context, eg: "When the tiger went "Rawr! Rawrrr!", I literally fouled my breeches!" |
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Can't have a factual should. Shoulds are normative.
>What is kind of useless is a word that can mean some thing or its opposite
Is the word really useless or indeed useful if no one can provide a 'real' example of actual ambiguity between the two meanings? Furthermore, it's not as if ambiguity between one meaning and an opposite meaning is the greatest ambiguity there is-- if anything, it makes it particularly obvious which meaning the speaker intends.