• stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    381·
    7 天前

    What’s the brand on the first phone? Someone scribbled over it so now the logo is completely unrecognisable to me

  • MouselemmingEnglish
    1937·
    8 天前

    Okay I’ll be that guy. Not literally.

    It’s still a funny visual joke, and loses nothing by being simply

    iPhone went through mitosis

    Or if you’re even more pedantic than I,

    iPhone camera went through mitosis

    Are there many more urgent problems in the world than proliferation of misused "literally"s?

    Absolutely. And I do my tiny part. But focusing for a moment on something small like this helps me step away from the abyss.

    • KoalaUnknown@lemmy.worldEnglish
      114·
      8 天前

      1. in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually:

        I literally died when she walked out on stage in that costume.

      • Michal@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        6 天前

        If the words meaning has changed, what’s to new word to use when we mean literally (in its original meaning)?

      • MouselemmingEnglish
        4·
        8 天前

        But not metaphorically, which is what we’re seeing here, in this visual pun.

      • JaxEnglish
        79·
        8 天前

        Yes, and with that definition it becomes a contronym. As in a contradiction. As in the word no longer peforms the function it once did. And before you say ‘bUt LaNgUaGeS sHiFt OvEr TiMe’ - the word virtually literally peforms the same function as the new definition.

        Who am I kidding, discussing the importance of articulation to people who never learned the definitions of the words they use has always been a losing battle. Your knowledge will always be less valuable to them than their ignorance.

        • KoalaUnknown@lemmy.worldEnglish
          83·
          8 天前

          I just gave you the definition, from the dictionary. Maybe you are the one that never learned the definitions of the words they use.

          • MouselemmingEnglish
            2·
            8 天前

            That definition doesn’t fit this example either. If it did, we’d end up with 2 iPhones.

          • JaxEnglish
            2·
            8 天前

            Your knowledge will always be less valuable than their ignorance.

    • BossDj@lemm.eeEnglish
      31·
      8 天前

      Now your thoughts on the capitalization of I in iPhone at the beginning of the sentence

      • MouselemmingEnglish
        2·
        8 天前

        Well, I have to say I think it’s okay because generally we do capitalize the first letter of a sentence. But my phone of course autocorrected it. And since it’s a name, we should defer to the preference of the person or thing being named. If I said “e e cummings was a poet perhaps best known for his rejection of capitalisation and punctuation,” it would be stupid and perhaps rude of me to type it as “E. E. Cummings,” and yet that’s how he appears in Wikipedia. So I guess I come down on the side of, “I’ll allow it.”