What is something you thought you knew your whole life and only just recently found out you were wrong the whole time?

posted 17 days ago

Mine is that at my age (barely made it into Gen Z on the old end) I just found out today that a Bo Weevil is an insect (beetle) and not some kind of mole or similar rodent.

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tatterdemalion@programming.dev

4 points

17 days ago

I thought jealousy and envy were synonymous.

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a Kendrick fan@lemmy.ml

3 points

17 days ago

i learnt a while back that they’re not the same, but i can’t even remember the difference

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invalidname@lemmy.world

9 points

17 days ago

Envy is wanting something someone else has. Jealousy is fearing someone will take away something you have. Or I’m about to learn that what I’ve recently learnt is not true and then this would be my answer for this post.

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BigBrainBrett2517@lemmy.world

5 points

17 days ago

This is correct! Majority of the time when someone says they’re jealous of something they absolutely mean envious. E.g. “You’re going for a holiday next week? I’m so jealous.” Nope. Envious.

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ylph@lemmy.world

4 points

16 days ago

Majority of the time when someone says they’re jealous of something they absolutely mean envious.

Isn’t this how language works ? If majority of the time people use the word in certain way, than that becomes one of its accepted meanings. In fact dictionaries list one of the meanings of “jealous” to be “envious” (with citations of this usage going back to 14th century, including works by Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain that are over 100 years old)

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JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world

3 points

16 days ago

While obviously you’re correct, this is not necessarily a good thing. The jealousy-envy collapse is clearly an impoverishment of language. These are two different concepts and it’s useful to have words for concepts.

FWIW: the doctrine that “whatever people say is by definition correct and wise” is actually a pretty Anglocentric and modern thing. Linguists didn’t always think this, and you won’t get people saying this for French, for example.

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ylph@lemmy.world

1 point

16 days ago

Is it really a modern thing ? Somehow we got from Beowulf to Shakespeare, and from Latin to French in the past. I feel like the concept of “freezing” language in some fixed form is the more modern and academic ideal - and quite a quixotic one at that - people on the street will do with the language what they will as they always have.

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3 points

16 days ago

Jealousy is Smeagle with the ring.

Envy is Smeagle when someone else has the ring.

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