It’s funny, but everyone’s always so dismissive in exactly this way. ‘Oh, it’s semantics’, like that doesn’t matter[1].
Semantics matter. The most maddening words in any language are ‘you know what I meant’. There are people here with wildly different life experiences, who think in different ways because they think in different languages. To dismiss semantics is to literally dismiss clear communication in favor of laziness and assumption. Any why? Because people don’t feel like taking the time to communicate clearly? Because they can’t bother being precise?
I swear, sometimes I feel like people do it on purpose, so that when they get called on their crap, they can hide behind ‘you know what I meant’ and accuse anyone who tries to take them at their actual word to be somehow venal, shallow, and interested only in scoring idiotic points in the kind of popularity contest most of us should have outgrown by the time we learned algebra.
- And I don’t mean this as ‘Elsebeth is being one of those disingenuous jerks’. She’s not. After all, she’s addressing her own statements there, as well. But there are plenty of people who do this, and they’re an annoying bunch of self-serving gits, in my opinion.