Just realized that "upside down" means "the up side is down", making it upside down

Binette@lemmy.ml to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 336 points –
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It's not really that I interpret it in another way, but I never really thought about the structure of the word šŸ˜…

Go further. For example, people say 'gypped' without knowing it's a pejorative reference to the word 'Gypsy' which is itself a pejorative of the Romani.

My favorite recently is sophist from the pejorative Platonic definition. It really puts words like sophisticated in a different etymological light and subtle contextual meaning.

I remember learning this about 20ish years ago and telling my then-sister in law about it when I explained why I wasn't going to use it anymore. I got told I had a stick up my ass, and this was by a marginalized (gay, immigrant) woman. (Somewhat unrelated note - very grateful she's a former relation.)

So glad people have been learning and I've been hearing "gypped" less and less in recent years.

Some words have simply entered common use and become decoupled from their former meaning. Maybe your acquaintance was right.

Watching my own language means my "acquaintance" was right? I don't think I'm the one with a stick, if that's the case.

Iā€™ve had similar realizations about words like ā€œacrossā€ and ā€œagainā€.

Yeah, actually I had never thought about the structure of the word either. Thanks for the great shower thought!

I've definitely had a similar feeling with band names and brand names, etc. You're just so used to hearing them that they are their own thing without being the component words that the name contains.