Showerthoughts @lemmy.world jscari @lemmy.world 10 mo. ago

A fat chance and a slim chance are the same thing

39 comments

If you're up for something, or down for something, it means the same thing.

If you fill in a form or fill out a form, it means the same thing.

English is fucked.
- Think about filling in a form, though. Filling in a form—“to fill” is unambiguous. In/out isn’t even necessary when you think about it. “I’m going to fill a form” means the same thing too.
  
  I feel like you're technically correct, but saying "fill a form" just sounds weird to a native English speaker.
- The alarm went off, so I turned it off.
- Also try this inflammable table with flammable chairs.
  
  I hate this one, it confuses Dutch people from time to time, so they think “inflammable” means “fire resistant”.
  
  Extra scary when there's only an English-language warning on this
- Don't forget you might already be in the right place and don't need to go up or down. Then you can say you're "there for something"
I guess fat chance is said sarcastically.
- I've never not heard it said sarcastically.
  
  There are words and phrases in English that get used sarcastically so often they lose their original meaning. There is a word for this and I swear I've seen a whole list somewhere but my google fu is weak today.
  
  There's a fat chance you're gonna be eating those words.
  
  Now, I expect to be down voted.
  
  I don't care, but I'm going to piss a lot of people off.
  
  I say "I could care less".
  
  That's sarcasm. It's what my nineties, heroin chic, grunge music adolescence gave me.
  
  I could care less. It would just require that I make an effort. That's not caring less. That's caring about something.
  
  It's like how the biggest homophobes always seem to be closeted. They care too much.
You can make profit on and profit off
- I could build on your point or build off of it.
  
  But if you’re hardly working, you’re not working hard.
- Alarms can go off and be turned off
Yup. And one means it via sarcasm.
- Yeah, with this argument, "excellent" and "terrible" means the same thing.
one is just said sarcastically
Fun fact: awful and awesome used to be synonyms
Antiautonyms! https://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/fun/wordplay/antiauto.html

Or contronyms. I don’t funny understand the delineation between the two.
I've always loved Mace Windu telling someone "your chances come in two sizes: slim and fat" in an old Star Wars Novell called Shatterpoint.
Fat chance is a sarcastic phrase, so they don't actually have the same literal meaning
https://johnsonenglishdhs.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/1/5/121524970/english_is_a_crazy_language_full_text.pdf
Not when you have a slim Jim
- I tried eating a Fat Jim but then I got banned from Grindr
  
  🤣

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