26 Comments
Oct 12Liked by Andrew Smith

Uh, let me drop this verse,

It's "versa" vs. "versus,"

Confused? Let me reverse.

Andrew says it's all Latin,

But I think that's perverse.

If Latin's so great,

How come it's in a hearse?

...what?

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author

Is our group gonna be called PDJ for short (Pedantic Dad Jokers)? Might be time for a trademark.

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Oct 12Liked by Andrew Smith

I thought “PDJ” was for “Phony DJs”?

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author

We will use a different abbreviation with each hot album we drop. Phony DJs is our sophomore record.

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Oct 12Liked by Andrew Smith

“Pink Dildo Jerks” will be our “edgy” experimental album we'll think is amazing and everyone else will see as our worsening midlife crisis.

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author

We could also do a meta play here on this conversation, which is where the name of the band comes from, so OF COURSE our superfans are going to want to read and reread this thread.

Profound Dives into Juxtaposition? (here we are)

Perverse Deepfake Justifiers ('cuz we like to experiment with AI)?

Painfully Danish Jokes? ('cuz PDJ)

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Oct 13Liked by Andrew Smith

Punishing Dead Jurors.

I think we've just about exhausted the entire dictionary at this stage. Surely there are no more words left.

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Don’t sell yourself short… mediocre, ha! Cringy would be more apt (and a higher standard to achieve)!

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Oct 12Liked by Andrew Smith

I'm just repeating what the critics said about the album. I quite liked it. It's my favorite after our latest album “Pretty Daily Jingles.”

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author

Oh, I meant to update you that our newest album "Partly Digested Juniormints" has dropped.

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Yous guys. Making spit out my tea! 🤭

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Oct 12Liked by Andrew Smith

Incidentally, "Spit That Tea" is track #17 on our mediocre third album "Punk. Dubstep. Jazz."

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Oct 12Liked by Andrew Smith

Is the “long etymological journey upwards” called vertical?

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Oct 13Liked by Andrew Smith

Yes, “approaches” is a curious term…

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author

I agree. It's tantalizing to imagine something that "might as well be" infinity to us, but when you zoom in, it's just clear that it's nowhere near infinity.

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Oct 14Liked by Andrew Smith

Yes, “zooming in” gives us a different perspective. We use microscopes and telescopes to do so…and possibly imagination…

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author

I think it's more like an asymptote, where it approaches infinity.

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Knowing the origin of "versus" makes the meaning of the phrase "Slowly I turned" more obvious.

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author

Indeed! These little nuggets go a long way (for me) to enrich the rest of the language.

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And the next gen is always morphing words. When my boys were littles (kinder soccer players), they would talk about who they were “versus” in the next game, making that preposition a verb as if they were asking who they were “playing” in the next game. So then, could “versus” be a present participle verb too?

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I think so, yeah! We did this as kids, too. I think we will just take words and plug them into new spaces to try them out. Sometimes, a new position will just stick, and that's a big part of linguistic drift and like how one language will become another one.

I always think about stuff like the Ship of Theseus: there's no line where something stops being one language and starts being another one.

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Insure and Ensure still trip me up. I was embarrassed when I was corrected using Insure in a big writeup when I meant Ensure. Yay they are related from Latin securus of course I looked that up

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Not to mention, Ensure makes you poop.

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lol dude no it's a protein drink for once your teeth fall out

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author

Oh, I assumed that happened with everyone.

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