Jun 9, 2020 · You have completely missed the point. Of course meaning derives from usage, but usage within a culture establishes consensus meaning. That is to say, words have objective meaning within …

May 31, 2017 · I assume that you’ve done all the Googling and have found, like me, that there appears to be no consensus on the origin. My favorite (almost certainly) apocryphal version found in the …

Nov 15, 2025 · The only car system I ever flushed was the radiator/cooling network back in the 1980s. Obviously entirely different than the transmission, however, it loosened up all manner of metallic and …

Sep 4, 2012 · I’m not an expert at all, honestly, but having come from a physics background and taken some linear algebra, I wouldn’t consider them to be philosophically the same thing, but I can see how …

May 8, 2025 · Meaning a police officer can say ‘we found your fingerprints at the crime scene’ as a lie. What they can’t do is have a false document from forensics printed up showing proof of your …

Mar 9, 2016 · … as opposed to “within an hour”. Say it’s 2:36 PM right now and someone says “I need an answer from you within the hour.” Does that mean they expect an answer before 3:00 PM, which …

Jan 14, 2024 · OP here. Well the consensus is very clear. Thank you all. FYI my confused take on “draw the blinds” as potentially meaning “open the blinds” was by analogy to “draw the sting” and other …

Jan 25, 2023 · There is no consensus on whether a homonym means a word that is both a homophone and a homograph, or whether a homonym can be either a homophone or a homograph. Yup. …

Nov 10, 2025 · The BBC ran a documentary entitled “Trump: Second Chance?” Trump is suing them because they edited fifty minutes out of his Capitol invasion speech; the time between “We are going …

Apr 11, 2025 · If I ever find myself in Texas (which I hope will not be soon), one of my goals is to visit the Rothko Chapel. Art is pretty subjective. That doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as bad or good, but …