Category: Semantics

The meaning of “Would you rather have unlimited bacon but no more video games or games, unlimited games, but no more games?”

Joe McVeigh2 Comments

I was recently asked about the meaning of the phrase

Would you rather have unlimited bacon but no more video games or games, unlimited games, but no more games?

On first glance, this phrase may not seem to work (and it kind of doesn’t – more on that below), but it gets used around the internet and people understand it. So that means it does work. What gives?

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Google doesn’t know what a subject is

Joe McVeigh3 Comments

Ok, the title of this post is a bit misleading. Google doesn’t “know” anything. It just grabs some text from a website and puts it up top to give people an answer to their question. The problem here is that the answer they give you is wrong. Because the website that Google uses is wrong. But there’s more than that. The answer that Google gives has been called a “massive overgeneralization” by Huddleston and Pullum. And if that’s not bad enough, all of the results in the Google search give you the exact same incorrect answer. What the what?

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What does the word origin mean today?

Joe McVeighLeave a comment

What does the word origin mean today?

There was a recent post on the blog Science-Based Medicine which discussed the changing meaning of the word organic. I think the author hits the nail on the head, but misses the mark slightly. How’s that for a mixed metaphor?! Let’s dig in.

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