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Comment by eatsyourtacos | Hacker News Reader

>Seems like an amazing move by Elon

You and I have very different definitions of the word "amazing"

> amaze (v.)

> "overwhelm or confound with sudden surprise or wonder," 1580s, back-formation from Middle English amased "stunned, dazed, bewildered," (late 14c.), earlier "stupefied, irrational, foolish" (c. 1200), from Old English amasod, from a- (1), probably used here as an intensive prefix, + *mæs (see maze). Related: Amazed; amazing.

"amazing" never meant "this is of surprisingly high quality and good"

It means that today.

You say, in response to somebody using it to mean something else.

There is a strange circular logic to saying words mean something new because they are commonly used in a new way and at the same time telling somebody how they're using a word is wrong because it doesn't match this new meaning.

Justifying a prescriptive attitude with descriptivist arguments is farcical.

Here's another dictionary (https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/amazing):

1. Causing great surprise or wonder; astonishing. 1.1 [informal] Startlingly impressive

Did pointedly ignoring common usage add anything here?

>Did pointedly ignoring common usage add anything here?

Yes, there are plenty of words going though the natural process of dilution. Providing some backpressure is, I think, useful to the language to preserve the richness of meaning. I'm responding directly to a discussion about the meaning of a word not interjecting into another conversation with a "well, actually..."

When you're writing a dictionary, words mean what people use them to mean. I'm not writing a dictionary.

Except that your 'well actually' still exists because you ignored the much more common usage when you made your point and didn't mention anything about your valiant effort to preserve etymological treasures until questioned?

Damn, get the body bag

It does, now. NLP sentiment classifiers assign it a positive rating with a very high confidence.

However it may still be use in some limited contexts, or historical contexts, its modern day usage is almost always with a positive connotation.

If you read the Lord of the Rings, you'll see quite a few usages of the word "amaze" not at all in the sense of "dude, that's amazing". It is not like reading that is some archaic text exclusive to english scholars.

I think it is good to be reminded of the higher quality meaning of words that are falling into bland generic meanings. Words do change and there's nothing wrong with that, but some changes are better than others and the degeneration of specific strong meanings to generic common place ones isn't something that should be celebrated.

Celebrated or don't celebrate. Language evolves, meanings change, recognize it when it happens or you become the pedantic boring person at a meeting or party trying to explain, "No, 'begging the question' does mean what you think it does. It's a type of fallacy, not some segue into asking an obvious question.

I'm responding to somebody questioning another's definition of a word, not correcting someone for using a term wrong.

Then you misunderstand my point entirely. It's no longer wrong to use "beg the question" in this way. It is now part of everyday vernacular. It is now one of at least two correct ways of using the phrase. Language is weird that way, it's not set in stone, so if the "wrong" thing gets used enough and hits critical mass, it becomes a correct usage.

Look at the Great Vowel Shift, or how creoles, pidgins and patois develop and evolve. Language isn't static, and in the case of "amazing" its current vernacular usage has changed to almost always have a positive connotation.

Just wait until you see what we've done to awesome.

Lol, you know an online debate is spicy when people start pulling out dictionary definitions

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, dictionary definitions are the last resort of someone flailing for an argument.

Not if the argument is essentially about dictionary definitions. FWIW, if I had to imagine someone saying something is amazing without any context my understanding would tend towards the “old” meaning.

I've been in some spicy meetings where people pull up definitions on their phone. Those were amazing.

Haha, do you remember what the word was?

One was trying to decide whether to call the first version of something. Revision 0, revision 1, or version 1 followed by revision 1. The users that we were making the application for didn't care one bit what we called it, but the programmers sure had a lively discussion with a lot of eye rolling in the room.

Other than the ability to amaze?

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