To think sometimes people use words without fully understanding them?

[Oodiks]

There were a few examples in my previous AIBU thread. Including, but not limited to:

Genocide
Antisemitism
Zionism
Ethnic Cleansing

These are strong trigger words for many people, myself included, but I think they are often misused and/or misunderstood.

Thoughts?

Decimated literally means 1 person out of ten is killed (as a punishment for a group, eg a mutinous Roman legion). Therefore 9 out of 10 are unharmed (though traumatised!)

A much harsher version of this was carried out by King David after defeating the Moabites when…
“He made them lie down on the ground and measured them off with a length of cord. Every two lengths of them were put to death, and the third length was allowed to live. So the Moabites became subject to David and brought him tribute.”
2 Samuel 8:2

Nowadays decimated means the destruction of a large number / many.

It would be correct in modern English to say King David decimated the Moabites, though in fact he killed two thirds of them rather than just one tenth.

In this example though, the person is saying the expression I literally died (of embarrassment). Which would be considered correct, no?

I was helping my child with his history (Roman) revision this weekend and we came upon that phrase. I was just about to comment 😂

No @Rickrolypoly because if they had literally died they would be dead.

"The adverb literally means "actually," and we use it when we want others to know we're serious, not exaggerating or being metaphorical. The adverb literally means "actually," and we use it when we want others to know we're serious, not exaggerating or being metaphorical."

yes, most of the time they just repeat whats in the news or what they think they know about x topics many examples can also be on mumsnet itself , sometimes we need more academic discourse type posts.

Yes but what I am saying is that the full saying is I died of embarrassment and that is what people mean when the say "I died". They are referring to being embarrassed. The last part is just dropped, due to evolution of speech/slang I guess. The person saying this is not saying that they died, it's is an expression to indicate extreme embarrassment.

A great thread love reading the comments 👏 and making me lol,

I have used all four of those very emotive words in the last year when discussing or reacting to, the horrors endured by thousands of innocent civilians, mainly children, in Gaza.

I understand the words very well. I am very clear on their meaning. I know fully well what I mean when I use those four words, and the intent behind my use of them.

If someone's opinion differs to mine, it does not mean I am ignorant or do not have a good grasp of language. It just means their opinion differs from mine. To suggest my difference of opinion is simply due to ignorence or incorrect language use is incredibly patronising!

Treacherous is often overused by someone close to me, who will remain unmentioned.
Sometimes people over use words or misunderstand words, but also they might just see it as more serious/scary/etc than we do.

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Woman....

And if you say 'I died' or 'I died of embarrassment' then it's clear that you are using the term as as an exaggeration or metaphor to indicate severe embarrassment or that feeling of wishing the ground would swallow you up.

Adding "literally" is taking away the exaggeration/metaphor element of the saying and changing it to "I actually died of embarrassment" and clearly you didn't because unless iZombie is now a documentary, zombies don't exist and they sure as hell can't tell me a story about being embarrassed.

Well this is awkward 😂

When someone changes their mind and is said to do a 'full 360'. If you have turned 360 degrees, you are back at the place you started.

But you can literally die of embarrassment. The phrase means to be extremely embarrassed. So you can literally be extremely embarrassed.

www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/die-of-embarrassment-shame#:~:text=From%20Longman%20Dictionary%20of%20Contemporary,I%20just%20died%20of%20embarrassment.

Yep. Should be a 180.

Eviscerated

when we actually mean excoriated…

Did that for years, myself. Felt like such a twit when I realised!

Literally is literally. It's not (to be) used metaphorically. I'm not sure what the argument is here. You can say you died or died of embarrassment and that's fine - you're not saying that you're literally dead. You can say you're literally extremely embarrassed, that's fine too, but you cannot say you "literally died" or "literally died of embarrassment" (and still be literally alive).

It's a turn of phrase people have misused so much it's accepted because it's understood but it doesn't make it grammatically correct.

So many of these are derived from Latin. I’m thankful for a very academic education where I studied Latin for 5 years- helps enormously with English.

I hear a lot of exasperated when people mean exacerbated. Drives me nuts. 🙃

In a book I downloaded onto my Kindle, characters kept smiling or looking lecherously at one another.

I think the author thinks it's a fancy word for unpleasant.

I'm not sure why but the one that always really annoys me is "ambivalent".

I see and hear people using it a lot when they mean "nonchalant, apathetic etc" when it doesn't mean that at all.

Self published (self edited) books are the worst!!

People muddle up mortified and horrified quite often.
They are use humbled when they mean something quite different e.g it was so humbling to win a huge away.

Nope