The phrase. Hate it with an Orwellian passion. I will never use it. Again.
Yeah, I…
…what were we talking about?
I don’t get it. I think it’s quite a useful concept.
Do you mean you’re sick of people using it as a junk phrase?
Uhh…
You just don’t grasp the concept, that’s all.
(wanders away)
Hehe. I get it; the phrase is supposed to mean ‘continung to believe something you yourself know or suspect to be untrue’, but it is quite often seen in debate to mean ‘refusing to agree with what I say when I am so obviously right’.
Would you stop it, Bryan!
Aeschines, it’s just so posy and such a nasty little put down. Ripe for being used by people with no idea what it means with a smug smile on their face.
Some phrases have this visceral effect on all of us, non?
Non.
Bless your heart, are you coming down with something, Roger?
Just a chronic case of fuddyduddyitis, I suspect, Zoe.
Why don’t we just stick with the more accessible “he’s full of shit.”
Roger, sometimes nasty little putdowns are warranted. Such was the case when the phrase cognitive dissonance was used about an hour before your post.
Like Reggae music, do you?
Anything in particular inspire this rant, Roger? Any egregious misuses of the word out there that you’d particularly like to point us to? I don’t know, it seems to have been used correctly the last few times I’ve seen it…
Exactly!
With a phrase like c…d…, what will happen is that people will be using the phrase to mean different things, as sure as eggs is eggs. You’ll get the people who know what it really is intended to mean (which, let’s face it, is not obvious from the sum of the parts). Then, you’ll get people who thinks it means a hundred other things (from “you’re spouting a load of bollocks” to "why don’t you agree with me?).
It’ll fast become a marker of a certain type of intellectual (and I wager political) stance - can’t see too many “conservatives” using it. Give me a crock of self-serving shite any day.
You’re complaining about that phrase, and yet you use this:
Physician, heal thyself!
It’s a step up at least from the last Bible verse that was aimed in my direction. Can’t remember which thread, but I had to undergo quite a bit of therapy after that one.
You’re complaining about the use of the trite phrase “as sure as eggs is eggs”, and yet you use this:
People in glass houses.
Remove the plank from thine eye!
Go and do thou likewise.
A stitch in time saves nine.
Fuck off.
[sub]No, you did nothing to deserve this. It’s just that it was going down a steady slope of civility and relevance, and we’d arrived at the bottom. It had to be done.[/sub]
I salute your noble deed, sir.