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Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

Can it just be a frequency illusion, where you tend to notice a new-to-you phenomenon again and again at first https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion?wprov=sfla1 ?

Eager isn't an especially uncommon word (eg "eager beavers" is a somewhat common saying), even though it's not used in most convos.

I feel like "delve" is a YouTube phenomenon (as in "let's delve into this topic") as a weird proxy for "deep dive". Maybe a side effect of D&D's resurgence over the last decade, where it's often used to describe small adventures/dungeons...?

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This, and ChatGPT was trained on a lot of web content produced by businesses, so in my view this may lead it to overuse "buzzword" words such as "delve," "deep dive," "leverage," "optimize," "synergy," "impact," and others.

My new frequency illusion is the phrase "ride or die". I'm 32 and I had never heard that in my life until I watched that show Cruel Summer and now it seems like I hear it everywhere, mostly on tv/ads/podcasts and almost never when talking to people I know. I refuse to say it because I don't fully understand what it means and when I do hear it, it always sounds a little cringey.

A Will Smith movie called ride or die came out in May and grossed $400M. Probably explains the jump in that phrase. I had heard it before but you only hear that phrase every couple years or so.

"Paramount" has been that word for me. Last year it seemed like every response from ChatGPT included it.

So I just heard about Frequency Illusion earlier today, and now I see it here again. Such meta.

(Not kidding, from today’s NYT crossword column: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/11/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2...)

> Eager isn't an especially uncommon word

I'd say it's very common, at least in my part of the US. It's one of the words I hear on a daily basis, anyway.

"Delve" used to be a very commonly used term before "deep dive" largely replaced it. I'm sure there are a whole lot of writings online that use "delve" because of the time period they were produced in.

As a graybeard, I'm personally still much more likely to say "delve" than "deep dive".

I think niche words like "delve" get replaced by phrases like "deep dive" to accommodate ESLs, especially in big business and software development. "Delve" is the word to use, of course, but if you're going to lose (or annoy/insult) your ESL audience by using fancy words, maybe just being accommodating has value.

Seems like "chef's kiss" is replacing "icing on the cake" or "cherry on top", although I think it really means "stamp of approval", so that one has been bugging me since I hear it all the time now, it seems.

All of that’s way more common in (American) business English than other registers, I’d say, including “eager”.

As a former academic in tech I'm tickled that you think 'a deep dive' is normative while 'to delve' strikes your ear as strange.

No judgment! I'm delighted, however, that language is so supple ("leverages domain-local synergies")

Probably a generational thing?

OP cited youtube as 'delve'ers, which skews young, so I'm guessing it's that your cognitive 'ear' is tuned to the technosphere

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