A fat chance and a slim chance are the same thing

jscari@lemmy.world to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 308 points –
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I've never not heard it said sarcastically.

There are words and phrases in English that get used sarcastically so often they lose their original meaning. There is a word for this and I swear I've seen a whole list somewhere but my google fu is weak today.

Semantic satiation?

No - semantic satiation is when you read or hear a word so much in a short timeframe that it stops feeling like a real word, and briefly feels like just a jumble of letters/sounds.

I hate semantic satiation. It happens all the time while programming for me. I'll have a variable name with some common word and, after typing it a few times my brain just stops recognizing it as a real word. This sometimes sends me into etymology dives to figure out why the word "jump" (or whatever) looks so strange.

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Now, I expect to be down voted.

I don't care, but I'm going to piss a lot of people off.

I say "I could care less".

That's sarcasm. It's what my nineties, heroin chic, grunge music adolescence gave me.

I could care less. It would just require that I make an effort. That's not caring less. That's caring about something.

It's like how the biggest homophobes always seem to be closeted. They care too much.

I remember we used to say “like I could care less” sarcastically back in the late 80s. I moved to a non-English speaking country in ‘89 so I have no idea when “I could care less” shifted from sarcasm to incorrect grammar, but I was surprised the first time I encountered people online mention it as a grammatical pet peeve.

I'm never quite sure what it says about me that I find David Mitchell the most relatable person on television.

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