this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2026
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Language is always changing. At one point 'an apron' was 'a napron' while words like 'literally' are no longer literally literal. What are some language battles that have been lost in living memory and what are some others you predict will soon occur?

Edit: Non-english examples very welcome!

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[–] blackbrook@lemmy.ml 1 points 42 minutes ago

Unique coming to just mean unusual.

[–] Ydna@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Ending sentences with propositions, and getting them jumbled around. My work does it in their advertisements and i cry every time.

"See what classes you can register for." Or modifying it to be worse; "see what classes you can register for fast"

[–] CedricWhaley@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

propositions

Hey sexy mama, wanna kill all humans?

[–] Ydna@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago

LOL I'm gonna leave it that way 🤣

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 6 points 21 hours ago

Ain't ain't a word.

It is now.

[–] laranis@lemmy.zip 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Not exactly what you're asking, but double spaces after ends of sentences.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 20 hours ago

I still use them. I find it makes reading and finding sentences easier in a paragraph. There was a study that it had an impact

[–] JoseALerma@lemmy.world 7 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Pour one out for the Oxford Comma .

Let's eat Grandma

Commas save lives!

[–] HamsterRage@lemmy.ca 5 points 12 hours ago

Us that technically a missing Oxford comma, or just a missing comma?

[–] racketlauncher831@lemmy.ml 3 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

The rich couple, me and ScarJo donated ten thousand dollars to a local charity school.

[–] likebudda@reddthat.com 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Y'all make a cute couple but she's doing the heavy lifting.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 1 points 3 hours ago

That's typical of her relationships.

[–] likebudda@reddthat.com 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Apple put the nail in the coffin for adverbs when "Think different" let illiterates think they were speaking correctly.

[–] tomenzgg@midwest.social 4 points 22 hours ago

*speaking correct

.I'm so sorry; I couldn't help myself

[–] MrPnut@lemmy.world 3 points 23 hours ago

The one that bothers me most (heard a lot in the software dev world) is when people say process-eez instead of processes, even if it is technically a word now, like ain’t

[–] CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (8 children)

Australian English language is now largely Americanised, a process that started in the post-war era is now mostly complete.

  • Terms such as 'gaol' have been widely replaced by 'jail'.
  • 'Programme' is mostly replaced by 'program'.
  • A 'car bonnet' is likely to be called a 'hood'.
  • 'Play lunch' is mostly replaced with 'recess'.
  • 'Pusher' is mostly called a 'pram'
  • 'Lacker band' is now mostly just 'rubber band'.
  • 'Boomer' no longer means kangaroo, but instead 'Old person.'

I'm not really bothered by it or anything, but it's been interesting to see it shift even over my lifetime.

[–] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 13 points 1 day ago

I'd say pram is still pretty British ("I have to push the pram-a-lot!") in the US it would be almost definitely stroller.

[–] Zoomboingding@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Americans don't use pram though, we say stroller

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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 1 points 21 hours ago

Yes, but we got the good aussie slang!

Like, "no worries". Fucking love it.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago

Elden Ring is trying to bring the spelling back to "gaol."

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[–] wieson@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

I was one of the first years to have the new spelling rules.
It used to be, that a letter appearing more than twice in direct sequence would be cut to just twice. But that was lifted and is now just how many it should normally be. Examples: Schifffahrt, Brennnessel, Seeelefant.

It used to be, that "dass" could also be spelt "daß", but the rules for "ss" and "ß" were made clearer and more concise.

They also changed the way words could be split at the end of a line. If there was a double consonant in-between the syllables that were to split, the first syllable would take both consonants but now they are split evenly.
immer is split im-mer and not imm-er
But ck makes an exception: knackig is kna-ckig instead of old knak-kig

[–] _deleted_@aussie.zone 39 points 1 day ago (7 children)

“Decimating” no longer means killing ten percent as the Romans did; now it is used to mean the killing of a majority, so it’s close to the opposite of its original meaning.

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[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 day ago (5 children)

We were always supposed to put punctuation inside quotation marks; however, now it seems to be the user's choice of inside or outside. And I have to admit that most of the time when I’m using quotes, it seems more logical to me to place the punctuation outside of them.

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 4 points 20 hours ago

We were always supposed to put punctuation inside quotation marks;

Isn't this a US English thing? In India we were taught to close them like brackets - i.e., the one that opened last closes first. So

'Don't wait. I will come later.'

But

He said 'I will come later'.

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 4 points 21 hours ago

You know, I actually prefer that it be variable, but only when it serves a purpose.

Like, if Im quoting someone "I might want to indicate that they completed a sentence.", but also continue beyond it.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I still feel like I'm supposed to, but frequently I think it makes more sense to pull it outside if it isn't part of the quote. Putting it in the quotation makes it seem like it's associated with the quotation, when it may not be.

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[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

"Reticent" used to mean 'reluctance to speak', or, 'holding your tongue', but in the last decade I saw it being used more frequently as a straight up synonym for 'reluctance'. I wonder if people maybe think it's a more authoritative sounding word?

It's not a change of convenience or cultural drift, just a sign of people reading less and subconsciously trying to hide it, I think.

[–] RavuAlHemio@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (3 children)

From my perspective, literally being used for emphasis does not actually change its meaning, it’s simply hyperbole.

If you complain that you’ve been “waiting for hours”, even though it’s been 45 minutes, that doesn’t change the meaning of “hours”, you’re just exaggerating.

Hyperbole is a stylistic element; style is a completely different level of language than grammar/spelling/semantics (word meanings). As another example of style, ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatically correct but stylistically not recommended.

The OED actually includes the definition of literally as being what used to be the opposite of its definition nowadays, so I think that it does count as an auto-antonym (a word that means both itself, and the opposite of itself)

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