A fat chance and a slim chance are the same thing

jscari@lemmy.world to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 308 points –
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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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