"Thou shalt not strike terms from others' expressive vocabulary without suitable replacement." - me

Suppose your friend says: "I don't buy that brand of dip. It's full of chemicals."

Reasonable answer: "I'm skeptical that any of them are harmful in these quantities; we don't have much reason to believe that."

Reasonable answer: "Yellow 5? Are you allergic?"

Reasonable answer: "Okay, let's get the kind with four easily recognizable ingredients."

No: "Technically, everything is chemicals. Dihydrogen monoxide!"

Pedantry is seldom a way to make friends and influence people, but this example particularly gets my goat because there doesn't seem to actually exist a word in English for the thing you know perfectly well people mean when they say "chemicals". When I tried to find one on Twitter, the closest options were "toxins" and "additives". But neither is right. "Toxins" excludes yellow 5 - or, whether it does or not might be a point of contention; but it isn't the thing originally expressed with the word "chemicals". People may want to avoid - or otherwise discuss - "chemicals" for reasons other than thinking they're literally toxic; if I tell a maid I'm sensitive to chemical smells but vinegar is okay this is useful information. "Additives" includes, say, added sugar, which, while a plausible complaint, is a separate complaint.

Suppose your grandma says, "Okay, no technology at the dinner table."

Reasonable answer: "I'll put the laptop away to make room for the potatoes, but I need the phone because I get anxious without it."

Reasonable answer: "Sure, Grandma."

Reasonable answer: "We can try that until Uncle Bill starts making easily falsified claims about Flat Earth."

No: "Technically, the dinner table is a technology. And so are your glasses, Grandma."

In this case a more precise word exists - "electronics" ambiguously includes the chandelier but at least firmly sets aside the question of whether your grandma wants you to eat naked and with your bare hands. But refusing to know what she meant because she could have gotten closer to saying it, not even literally (she isn't being metaphorical), but technically, pedan...

Alicorn

Sequences

Living Luminously

Alicorn's Posts

Alicorn's Comments