On another site I was taken a bit aback yesterday when I read that a political ad had been “dropped”–so I immediately wondered who canceled it and why-was it DFT-enabled censorship at work again? A cowardly news service bending over backwards to not embarrass or anger him or his cronies? As I scanned the text of the article, I couldn’t even find any mention of it being stopped much less why, as it just went on about the ad’s content.
I then realized that “drop” has somehow come to mean “released” and its original meaning of “canceled” (the usual idiom I’ve heard it used in the past was for a TV series: “The Frasier reboot has been dropped from the schedule.”) has been obviated and nay turned on its head.
Another one which really gets my umm Capra is the acronym GOAT as it is typically used in sports to denote the Greatest Of All Time in some athletic activity. Except that the term “goat” has historically been used to denote an athlete who has fucked up, as in Bill Buckner or Jim Marshall. So whenever I see that I get antsy because the two terms pretty much mean the opposite.
There’s the story about how Meryl Streep was doing a photoshoot with other actors and some of them began calling her the GOAT. And then Streep made a mention of how people were calling her an old goat. So Jennifer Lawrence explained the term.
I’m as out of touch as a person can be. But my understanding is that OG means Original Gangster. It was a term among street gangs in Los Angeles that entered the mainstream via rap music.
The meaning of the term is that you’re authentic. If you appear to be acting like other people, it’s because you were doing it first and they’re imitating you.
“I could care less” meaning I couldn’t care less. this one’s been brought up in similar threads about English idioms. Personally I am ok with this usage, taking the meaning as sarcastic, or as a shortened form of “as if I could care less”.
Using ‘literally’ to mean ‘figuratively’-- “my head literally exploded when I heard the news”. Some say, eh, it’s just how language evolves, but I do have a problem with this usage. If literally literally comes to mean figuratively, how do we express something that is actually literal?
Words that have opposite definitions can cause confusion. If something is an oversight, it usually means it was missed or forgotten. Yet we have ‘oversight committees’. Same with overlook-- “did we already pass the scenic overlook I wanted to stop at?” “yes, I think we overlooked it”.
I saw that, but then I’ve seen it used in ways such as “Linda Carter is the OG nicest actress…”, which really would make no sense to me. But hey, I’m old.
Also, if it hasn’t been mentioned: random which to many people apparently means “unexpected”.
Random means that in a group, at any time each object in the group has an equal chance of being selected.
To be perfectly accurate real randomness can only happen mathematically. So when a “random” survey is conducted, it’s not even a little bit close to being truly random.
What’s the term for when an outcome is unpredictable but some outcomes are more likely than others? Like if you’re spinning a roulette wheel and guessing whether the result will be red, black, or green?
@Little_Nemo‘s description explains that use as well. The “gangster” part of “OG” is doing very little of the heavy lifting. Really, the term denotes a sustained authenticity.
Thanks; I’m still perplexed why gangsterism seems to be a desirable trait, but I will suffer through - your explanation is as good as I can get, I think.
Yeah, “OG” is almost like a title of respect, regardless of its gangsta origin. The satellite 1980s program features the MTV “OG VJs,” as they call themselves.