Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Slaughter the Butcher

Today, I had an intense debate on whether or not slaughter and butcher mean the exact same thing with a colleague. I said that butchering is killing but also making corpses ready for sandwiches, while slaughtering is just killing and has nothing to do with sandwiches. My colleague said both words mean the same thing. What ensued could only be called a dictionary war. Long story short, the Merriam Webster Dictionary agreed more with me, while the Oxford English Dictionary agreed more with my colleague. So, we were tied, and it seemed that our discussion would go on unto death. The tides were changed when an innocent bystander used a metaphor which equated slaughter and butcher, and I had to admit I was wrong. This just goes to show the power of metaphors.

Okay, petty word disagreements aside, do you like to be amused? Do you get mixed up about the phrase a lot--(should it be spelled alot)? The blog Hyperbole and a Half combines amusement and understanding "a lot" in an amazing way.

Or, you can check out The Oatmeal, which has amusing advice on everything from semicolons to spelling.

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