People Who Define Words in Special Ways

[Andara Bledin]

This is a huge peeve of mine.

This is about people who either get all pedantic about the origin of a term and completely ignore the fact that for more than a decade it's been redefined (live in the past, much?) or who choose a term that will be ambiguous in context and then use the alternate meaning without making any effort at all to clarify their point, usually so that they can come back later to rebut everybody who responded thinking they were using the primary meaning because it made just as much sense (this is like debate decoy).

As much as I dislike the way some terms drift and usage changes, if I want to effectively communicate, I have to acknowledge that the rest of the world isn't going to humor me just because I want, say, the word "gay" to still just mean "happy." Nor am I going to get bent out of shape just because someone uses a term that's origin is mired in bigotry that's fallen by the wayside in the ensuing centuries.

If you want to call all goats by the term unicorn and all your friends are in on the joke, more power to you. But don't act surprised or offended just because you told someone there was a unicorn in your garden eating your roses and they called you a booby.

[AccountingDrone]

I detest the term 'surgery' being used to mean 'operation' or 'procedure' as to me a surgery is the office a doctor is located in, or the room in a medical facility that an operation occurs in.

I didn't have a surgery, I had an operation to remove my parathyroid ... I had it done in a surgery.

[Ginger Tea]

At least with surgery you know what the speaker is on about, unlike the unicorn example.
I'd rather the medical profession got out of the whole Latin BS, in my early teens I had to see the leg specialist, which I forgot the name for at the time, so instead of them working out my "something pedic" aka orthopaedic they directed me to paediatrics aka the children's ward.
I then had to explain to the ward nurse the mistake and say "The leg doctors".

during my induction day due to my around the houses employer being the NHS I had to sit through all sorts of guff I would not encounter EVER in my work, mostly patient interaction and there was a bit where the GP was rabbiting off in medical terms to a guy in his 60's who was confused as hell, it sounded contagious and scary as hell, but was in fact rather minor, just the medical terms are alien to anyone who is not actually a doctor or in the medical profession on the whole.

Operation theatres are still called that as way back when they used to allow the not so general public in to view operations as if they were a play down the road.

[Andara Bledin]

I have never before heard the term "surgery" to describe a place. It's the 4th definition, after the actual act and decidedly uncommon usage.

It's worth noting that the root from which it is devised is also a verb.

You can hate it all you like, but if one wishes to be entirely pedantic, they're more correct than you are.

[Ginger Tea]

Depends on context but there are non operating rooms called surgeries, but most end up just being 'fancier' ways of saying GP's office.

I don't know how many real doctors use the word surgery for operation, I only know TV ones and UK and American shows use similar and different words all the time, so what is fine in Casualty / Holby City might draw a blank on Chicago hope and ER, the fact that Casualty is set in A&E instead of the ER is a big give away.

But regardless of how the word ended up in the collective vocabulary, if a doctor is saying surgery and not operation, well s/he's the one that's going to be doing it and I am not going to quibble before going under the knife.

Back to Unicorn goats, ages ago I wondered what the world would be like if children were taught wrong words for a few things, either a small school or a full on scientific research thing anything really, where a generation of school leavers would be using blue to describe soft or anything else for that matter.
It started after watching a 90's twighlight zone or outer limits where one man over time found the English words changing around him "Want to go for dinosaur?" he was asked which in the shows shifting language meant lunch.

[Andara Bledin]

The idea of "surgery" being a GP's office is a regional variant particular to Great Britain and the 5th definition, behind the room in which a surgery is carried out.

As for people using the wrong words, people do it all the time. They learn something incorrectly, and then refuse to change when it turns out that it didn't mean what they thought it meant because for many, many people, admitting to being wrong is far, far worse than being pigheaded and stubborn and making communication more difficult for everyone that has to deal with them.

And then there's the subset of those who go on to claim that doing it wrong "sounds better." No. It sounds like an ignorant fool putting on airs, is what it sounds like. >_<

[Ginger Tea]

The idea of "surgery" being a GP's office is a regional variant particular to Great Britain and the 5th definition, behind the room in which a surgery is carried out.

Which is rather out dated, my local GP's surgery is a waiting room with a reception area and an office for each GP to have consultations in, no fancy medical equipment is used outside of 'every day' items such as a stethoscope and BP arm band, the name has stuck even though none have anything capable of being used by a surgeon, nor are the doctors surgeons themselves but General Practitioners.
And yes the word is used in the name of that particular GP's office

As for people using the wrong words, people do it all the time. They learn something incorrectly, and then refuse to change when it turns out that it didn't mean what they thought it meant because for many, many people, admitting to being wrong is far, far worse than being pigheaded and stubborn and making communication more difficult for everyone that has to deal with them.

Computing and technology in general is full of these, to most the monitor is the computer and I loath TV writers who perpetuate this by damaging the screen thus rendering the computer dead, unless it's a rainbow iMac or an all in one, the loss of the monitor is no end of the world issue.
I gave up on them ever having 'hacking' portrayed remotely accurate, it's always dos and more text appearing than the fastest typist can create.
One episode of Attachment's a Channel 4 show about a dot com start up had the designer accidentally deleting the servers files not his own and the two techs were seen typing dramatically and the screen was showing
font face Arial font family Arial and other mundane HTML.

I mentioned before that no one from Japan ever bothered to correct the west about Sushi not being for raw fish, so if you spent the longest time thinking sushi was rice rolls with a fish centre then a meat or vegetarian version was not sushi, yet it was, but in my mind it was wrong, it was like calling coke a coffee cos it contained caffeine like coffee.
Yes I was wrong, but my teacher (not a real teacher, but 90's Japanese pop culture and the West's assimilation of words) never thought to say "hey this comes in other options too.

[Rageaholic]

Holy fuckballs do I hate this!

I like to call it "cult speak": Where a common definition of a word is changed to a more obscure, but very specific definition. I think it's a shitty way to argue because these people constantly switch between the accepted definition and their own "special" definition which confuses things and distracts from the meat of the argument.

(and yes, I know the legal system has specific definitions, but I still hate it)

[Nekojin]

Andara's brother frequently calls other players on XBox Live "faggot," "homo," and "queer," but gets all defensive if we tell him that he's being homophobic. "But I'm not using it in that way!"

Uh... yeah. You are. Jackass.

[wolfie]

If you want to call all goats by the term unicorn and all your friends are in on the joke, more power to you. But don't act surprised or offended just because you told someone there was a unicorn in your garden eating your roses and they called you a booby.

Calling a goat a unicorn is WRONG - goats have TWO horns.

[Nyoibo]

I have never before heard the term "surgery" to describe a place. It's the 4th definition, after the actual act and decidedly uncommon usage.

It's worth noting that the root from which it is devised is also a verb.

You can hate it all you like, but if one wishes to be entirely pedantic, they're more correct than you are.

The idea of "surgery" being a GP's office is a regional variant particular to Great Britain and the 5th definition, behind the room in which a surgery is carried out.

It's not particular to GB, you'll probably find it's fairly common in most commonwealth countries.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

I agree. Yes we all @#$%ing know that "irregardless" and "regardless" means the same damn thing. That the prefix of "ir" means "not" and the suffix of "less" means "without"...but it's been used since the early 20th century and is in common use.

I tend to avoid using it but that's how I was raised and I'm not going to go into a long lecture on how it's wrong just because someone else uses it. Hell I don't even mind if someone uses it since I know what the @#$% they mean when they use it.

Which to me is the point of language. If I understand what someone is saying either through their speech or through their typing, then I'm happy. They have succeeded at communicating a thought to me. And while irregardless may be a matter of much controversy, I've accepted it as a part of our modern language.

Now mind you, there are places where being pedantic about language does have its uses. I've been to a few Westboro Baptist Church counter protests and I love it when someone calls me a "faggot lover". I usually reply that...

Why yes! As a person who enjoys camping, there is nothing more comforting than having a few faggots of wood to burn in a campfire. I especially love roasting marshmallows on them.

Oh...oh my...you meant 'homosexual lover'. Sorry but I'm straight. Not narrow minded, but straight.

That really pisses 'em off.

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

I detest the term 'surgery' being used to mean 'operation' or 'procedure' as to me a surgery is the office a doctor is located in, or the room in a medical facility that an operation occurs in.

I didn't have a surgery, I had an operation to remove my parathyroid ... I had it done in a surgery.

Again this is part of what Andara is talking about. Using the word surgery to simplify explaining an operation is part of common practice and is part of how our language has evolved.

I say that my wife had knee replacement surgery. It's easier than saying that she "had her knee replaced in an operation" or "underwent a knee replacement procedure".

Or to use the "proper" term, "she had a knee arthroplasty surgical procedure performed on her right leg."

Knee replacement surgery gets the point across which is all I need to do. regardless of what terminology a person wishes that others would use, I use those three words and the point gets across.

Which is the whole point of language. It may not fit a particular set of linguistic parameters but it succeeded in conveying the concept.

And I rather think that's what Andara is trying to say.

[Nekojin]

Calling a goat a unicorn is WRONG - goats have TWO horns.

But real-world unicorns (Yes, they do exist) are goats.

[Ginger Tea]

Although the term Faggot isn't well used over here, you could also have the back up comeback of
"I enjoy putting faggot balls in my mouth, they are tasty."
As faggots are a form of meat ball in the UK.