this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

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The term literally meant that what ever was stated happened exactly as described without any additional figurative meaning. However, as is normal for human language, the meaning of the term has changed in general conversation. The new meaning is "I am not exaggerating the figurative meaning of this statement." This change is a response to recent exaggerated use of figurative language.

For example, someone may witness a person trip and think that they were going to fall, so they could say, "I saw them trip and shit my pants." They didn't really shit their pants. They weren't even close to it. They were surprised and slightly worried, so the use of shit my pants was an exaggeration of even the figurative meaning. In contrast, someone may correctly use the term in a figurative manner, such as, "When I saw that car run the red light and almost hit us, I was so scared that I literally shit my pants." They don't mean they actually defecated with their pants on, though that could have happened. What they mean is that they were truly scared as opposed to slightly scared. Thus, the term literally means "the exact figurative meaning of".

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[–] MrJameGumb@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The meaning hasn't changed. There are a growing number of people who use it incorrectly in such a way that it literally has no meaning in their sentence. We all judge them harshly, because they should feel shame.

[–] weariedfae@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

And should not be accommodated by dictionaries.