• nyctre@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    There’s usually a long explanation for these types of things which most of the time boils down to “because that’s how people have been saying it and it’s become the norm.”

    Many linguistical mistakes have been overused to the point of them changing their meaning. Take “decimation”. It used to mean to kill 1 in every 10. Because it sounds cool and has been used in a lot of media, it now mainly means to kill or destroy a large part of something.