Holy shit does that mean that inside out means the inside is out? 🤯
Does “right-side up” mean the right side is up or the “right” side is up? English does not make sense
also hi binette
English where feat smell and noses run
Feet, not feat
Artist: English feat. Smell & No$3$
Track: Run
Right as in correct.
hi nww :D
Right as incorrect.
Stupid english
Totally. The right hand I use to write with is not my right hand, it’s my left (averechts, if you will)
Right = correct
“The correct side is up”
I agree, English is a mess.
Wonder if OP thinks “right side up” means the left side is down
Upsigh down? Or upside ouwn?
You being brain-dead means your brain is dead.
You being brain-dead means your brain is dead.
Repost because all mods should choke on chainsaws.
The letter W is both called “double-U” and looks like two letter Us combined (in some curvy fonts at least)
Even moreso if you consider the old Latin alphabet that used V and didn’t have U.
In my language it’s called double-v, which makes so much more sense to me.
Apparently W was originally written as uu as early as ~600AD, hence the name, however it still used Latin/Roman letters which hadn’t yet distinguished between u and v as letters. For at least 700 years, u and v appear to have been considered the same and interchangeable (so "Double U " could look like “uu” or “vv”) until the first recorded distinction between the two in a Gothic era alphabet written in 1386. The two apparently did still see some overlap in use until about the 1700s with the turning point appearing to be when the distinction between their capital forms was accepted by the French Academy in 1726.
tl;dr: “Double U” predates the distinction between “U” and “V” so it’s up to chance which letter a language called it before it stuck.
IIRC from high school, they taught us “V” was “Vega” and “W” was “doble Vega”. Looking at Wikipedia, I may be remembering that wrong. They have “ve” and “doble ve”
Always funny to see native speakers discover trivial facts about their language
Took me until high school to realize bonjour=bon jour=good day. My brain just about exploded. Worldview destroyed.
umopapisdn
Shhh! Nobody tell them about “inside out.”
Don’t tell them about insid-- dang! Too late
Why isn’t it outside in?
Kif! We have a conundrum!
It could be to do with something called “ablaut reduplication”. Very basically English has a - kind of - untaught sound order that native speakers inherently apply to the language. Wikipedia will have an article to explain it better. Specifically the vowel order I-A-O. A great example is the phrase “Bish bash bosh” which is getting coverage recently. (One notable exception is “shit, shower, shave” but that is probably down to the chronology of the actions.)
Spot on insight :)
How else would one interpret it?
It’s not really that I interpret it in another way, but I never really thought about the structure of the word 😅
Ha same
Go further. For example, people say ‘gypped’ without knowing it’s a pejorative reference to the word ‘Gypsy’ which is itself a pejorative of the Romani.
I remember learning this about 20ish years ago and telling my then-sister in law about it when I explained why I wasn’t going to use it anymore. I got told I had a stick up my ass, and this was by a marginalized (gay, immigrant) woman. (Somewhat unrelated note - very grateful she’s a former relation.)
So glad people have been learning and I’ve been hearing “gypped” less and less in recent years.
Some words have simply entered common use and become decoupled from their former meaning. Maybe your acquaintance was right.
Seems like Orwell was right
And the Egyptians, too!
My favorite recently is sophist from the pejorative Platonic definition. It really puts words like sophisticated in a different etymological light and subtle contextual meaning.
What’s sophist mean?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophist_(dialogue)
Fake but convincing by argument, gaslighting, etc., generally by someone in a position like a professor, a judge, or a politician.
I’ve had similar realizations about words like “across” and “again”.
I get “across”, but what about again?
A gain. In addition to.
“A gain” as in one more. Gain meaning “an increase in amount”
Yeah, actually I had never thought about the structure of the word either. Thanks for the great shower thought!
I’ve definitely had a similar feeling with band names and brand names, etc. You’re just so used to hearing them that they are their own thing without being the component words that the name contains.
I think the pronunciation, specifically the blending of the end of “upside” and beginning of “down”, turns it into one of those compound words that your brain interprets as an independent word, rather than a combination of its composite parts.
Unused to wonder if the radio announcers that are always reciting the station call letters found that the letters stopped sounding like individual sounds, and the whole recitation became a sort of “word” for them. Like “You’re listening to 102.9FM WBLM!” Did it stop being “double-you bee ell emm,” and turn into more of a mashup of “dubbleyabeeyelmm”?
True, the difference is pretty subtle, especially to a listener, but I wonder strange things sometimes…
As a fellow wonderer of strange things, all I have to say is keep wondering, my friend :)
I think this is the case for a lot of words. It ceases to be a combination of words and it’s just one word. Then in the shower you break it down and ohhh.
Downside up?
Down on the upside
Yes! So glad someone else though of this 😎
Heh good insight.
(Ps I also have these thoughts about breaking words down (unicorn is uni-corn) and some people get really snarky about it. Don’t let bad comments get to you.)
https://kbin.social/m/Etymology could use some more love!
Where’s the bot that links this as a community when you need’em.
In-sight
You should celebrate with some upside down cake
So that’s what it’s called…
It’s actually one of my faves 😋
Thank God, another stupid person like me. We are strong in numbers.
This legitimately made me gasp. I feel stupid i didn’t realise this.
The opposite of “upside down” is not “downside up”, but “right-side up”.
The opposite of “right-side up” is not “left-side down”, but “upside down”.
Ladies, gentlemen, and all in between. The English language.
The up side is the right side. The down side is the wrong side. Quite logical to me
You’ve just made it make sense. Have an upvote of my gratitude.
