“Do you want to do this thing with me?”

“I’m down.”

“I’m up for it.”

    • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      “I get knocked down! But I get up again! And you’re never gonna keep me down!”

      • Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        On the other hand, “knocked down” and “knocked up” have drastically different meanings, which is a little confusing for foreigners sometimes. =P

      • The Pantser@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Pissing the night away is also a double entendre, meaning wasting time or literally pissing all night from drinking.

  • RustyNova@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    As a non native speaker, this messed me up for years

    I always heard about “being up” for something, so I logically assumed that being down meant the inverse. Even more that “feeling down” usually means not being able to do things.

    • wolfshadowheart@slrpnk.net
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      11 months ago

      Not to confuse you more, but with your phrasing you are correct.

      If you’re up for it, or being up for something, you are interested. Similarly, if you’re down for something, or you’d be down for it, you are interested.

      But if you are feeling down, you are not up for it.

      The former 2, the verb is the action of being ready.

      In the latter, the verb is feeling and down is the state.

      For example, despite me feeling down I’m down to go out and party tonight.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      It’s not about the crest or the trough. It’s about the motion of the ocean baby.

      Up and down are both disturbed, ya dig? It means the thing made an impression on you. Got under your skin, gave you the itch, it’s bugging you, eating at you, lighting a fire under your ass, putting you in the hot seat.

      No more smooth sailing. Buy the ticket, take the ride, you know? Get this idea off the ground, get up and bounce. You know, jump around.

      Get up, get up, and get down.

  • leo85811nardo@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    “Hey you want some potato chips?”

    • “Potato chip sounds good” => Yes please
    • “I’m good” => No thanks

    Messed me up all the time first time came to the US. Why use positive response for rejection?

  • 4am@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    It makes a little more sense with the context that “I’m down” is shortened slang for “I’ll throw down on that”, itself slang for “I will get in on this situation” (as in “throwing down” some money or chips when gambling)

    • VeryNiiiice@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      I thought it is short for “I am putting myself down for that” or “put me down for that”. As in, putting yourself down on a list for attending an event.

  • jet@hackertalks.com
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    11 months ago

    In the game of hell let loose you’re constantly trying to build Garrison’s for your team to spawn on, and destroy Garrison’s so your enemy can’t spawn.

    Highly ambiguous

    Garrison down on the point!

    Does this mean a friendly Garrison was just built? Does this mean the enemy Garrison was just destroyed? Who knows! Why not both?

    Schrödinger’s Garrison

    • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
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      11 months ago

      More recently, the difference between good and bad is in the presence or absence of the word “the” before “shit”.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        This is problem with Russian language.

        это радио щит!

        “I think he likes the radio”

        “But we’ll never know!”

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      … Tricks are for kids he plays much gigs

      He’s the big bad wolf and you’re the three pigs

      He’s the big bad wolf in your neighborhood

      Not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good

      Run DMC

  • cannache@slrpnk.net
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    11 months ago

    The number of potential misunderstandings in English is why our language is the world favourite lol

  • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Flammable. Inflammable. Famous. Infamous. So many dumb prefixes that make no sense.

    There really needs to be more language revisions every couple decades to get rid of stupid shit or revise letters, words, and spellings to be more in tune with their phonetic pronunciations.

    • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      C / K / S. Remove X. Change letter names to match their sounds.

      A / ugh / Ayyy.

      B = Buh

      C = Removed? It’s just K or S in reality.

      D - Dih

      E - same?

      Etc. etc. there’s better linguists than an old school Grammar Nazi turned Language Darwinist.

      I like the idea of removing upper and lower case letters too and changing their denotation with a new symbol, but I’d have to think longer about case studies or could be easily persuaded.

    • Legolution@feddit.uk
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      11 months ago

      They aren’t dumb, peoples’ usage is just poorly informed and incorrect.

      Famous/infamous are not synonyms, so you shouldn’t be using them interchangeably. Infamous specifically means “Famous for the wrong [read negative] reasons”. Like a serial killer. Or somebody who is famous for knocking over and breaking a priceless work of art.

      If something is flammable, it can be set on fire. Like wood, or paper. If something is inflammable, that’s still true, but it has the additional property of being able to spontaneously combust, without being actively set alight. Like oils, or unstable chemicals, or some explosive material.

      These are levels of nuance which are actually really useful, if handled correctly. The fundamental rule appears to be that in an “in…” word, the prefix gives specific detail about how the object holds the properties of the suffix.

  • kaktus@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Is it just me or are people also using hands up instead of hands down? As in: this is hands down/up the best post I’ve read all day.

    As a non English native this always throws me off.

      • eliasar@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        US here, we use “hands down”.

        That is hands down the worst children’s play I’ve ever seen.

        • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          I think some people are deliberately trying to fuck up intergenerational understanding by teaching weird or opposite versions of phrases and other cultural tokens