July 09, 2007

Comments on the English Language

Okay, okay, what's with the word INVALUABLE? People say it means priceless, but I fail to see how that can be.

Consider the word EXPENSIVE, as in "that jacket is EXPENSIVE, but maybe if I buy it for my wife she will not cheat on me (that damn bitch)."

Consider the word INEXPENSIVE, as in "when I bought my wife the INEXPENSIVE bracelet for Christmas, she threw up her hands and said 'our neighbor, who has been fucking me like a whore for the past five years, gave me an EXPENSIVE bracelet...why can't you do better!"

So there you have it. INVALUABLE actually means NOT VALUABLE.

Will someone defend the accepted definition of INVALUABLE? What does it even mean?

3 comments:

Kate Jenkins said...

Charles, how do you find these word-sentence examples?

Anonymous said...

Didn't we agree that something INVALUABLE isn't necessarily material? It could be a skill, or even an emotion. Let's say that hard work is invaluable to me, in a positive sense. It might not be invaluable to you (which could also be "invaluable" the way you're looking at it, but that's not helping). It's subjective. Most things are.

Those are far more...colorful examples than you used before.

egb

Tristan said...

It's because English is a hodgepodge of a ton of languages, so words can be inconsistant. That's where context can be helpful.