Yes yes, language changes over time. I’ve heard that mantra for decades and I know it. That doesn’t mean there aren’t language changes that aren’t grating when they become fashionable (and hopefully temporary).
For me, “morals” being used as a crude catch-all application of “morality,” “ethics,” “integrity” or related concepts bothers me. Sentence example: “Maybe if society had morals there wouldn’t be so many minorities in prison.”
An even more annoying otherwise-fluent-speaker modification I see is when “conscious” is used to mean “consciousness” and “conscience” interchangeably. Sentence example: “Single mothers on welfare that steal baby formula have no conscious.” It sounds like they’re saying the shoplifter is not mentally aware of their own actions, not that they’re lacking sufficient “morals” to let their baby starve for the sake of Rules-Based Order™.
There’s others, but those two come up enough recently, with sufficient newness, for me to bring them up here. Some old classic language quirks are so established and entrenched that even though I hate them, bringing them up would likely invite some hatemail and maybe some mystery alt accounts also sending hatemail after that. You know, because they “could care less(sic)” about what I think.
When people get all weird about distinguishing “ethics” and “morals,” and when they’re afraid to just call things good or bad. In Catholic high school one of my teachers said the difference was that atheists can only be ethical and not moral and that seemed like a load of bull so I just use them interchangeably. But now people seen to make the distinction in the other direction, what with the whole, “Up yours, woke moralists!” bit
Anyone who fucks around with these word games is hiding something, possibly even from themselves. Ethical, moral, good, beneficial, productive, pro-social, I don’t care what term you wanna use, if it’s good it’s good and if it’s bad it’s bad. When someone says their views are ethical but not moral or moral but not ethical, get ready to hear some fucked up shit.
Maybe there’s some academic distinction where it’s meaningful and ok but I’m just going off personal experience.
There’s local varieties of that kind of “hide the fucked up thing” tactic, like if a consumer product or brand is personally pleasing to someone, that person might solipsistically say that it’s “against materialism” to criticize it no matter who was hurt or exploited in its production.
Referring to people of unknown gender by male pronouns.
Doubling down on the “I could care less” as a misinterpretation of “I couldn’t care less”.
The phrase “I could not care less” means someone doesn’t care whatsoever. Saying “I could care less” implies the person does care. I had no idea how widespread it was until I started using US websites.
Also, it doesn’t so much annoy me, but
spoiler
gendered language. using neutral terms for everything is actually easier and simplifies the language.
This might be the perfect place for me to take the soapbox and tell you all about my opinion on singular “they” (no, it isn’t that one)
Singular “they” should be treated as any other singular pronoun for the sake of clarity.
They are eating pancakes.
They is eating pancakes.
😨 As a bad English speaker I am scared now
