Yeah, yeah. You too.

Hey! Stop unvegetarianing the beans! 😡

I don’t know what you mean by more descriptive. The only meanings here that are necessary are “by chance” and “unexpected”.

The word ‘uninentional’ would convey a similar meaning, it’d be fine, but there are situations out there where it doesn’t work.

“Their meeting was entirely unintentional.”

By whose intent? If we’re speaking from the perspective of fate, then this is actually a bad choice.

“Their meeting was entirely inadvertent.”

I’m… not sure what this would even mean. I would probably assume this came from a 17-year-old who got their hands on a thesaurus.

“Their meeting was entirely by chance.”

This obviously works. I think it lacks a bit of whimsy. Maybe it trades one whimsy for another. Accidental means “by chance,” though, you’d only be trading the word for its definition.

but sometimes it becomes ambiguous, as in this case (1-b is, too, applicable),

1-b is not applicable. The outcome of this accident is a fortunate one, so a misfortunate interpretation would be incorrect. I mean, this is why it feels odd to you, is it not?

I can only assume that what happened is you read the sentence and thought it would end “They accidentally shit their pants,” or something, and were surprised it didn’t. That didn’t happen to me. And even if it had, I could have recovered.

I’m also on your side regarding “literally” […] I don’t use it as an intensifier. It’s stupid.

Eh heh~ This is not the side that I’m on.

Knowing different sides of a word, or in this case adding new ones, allows you to affect your speech in different ways to say different things about yourself. If you’re being formal, then you wouldn’t use the intensifier variant of literally, or at least you would be more precise about it, but if you wanted to seem more street, or maybe youthful, then literally might be a great choice. Think about the power this gives you when writing dialogue for characters, or when speaking to certain demographics.

In my view, ‘literally’ getting another definition only increases the number of toys in my toybox.

I did say earlier that I defend slang.

I don’t know, is it?

Seriously, is it? Fear & Hunger is really scary.

What would swapping 1-a and 1-b’s places do? I’m not ignoring 1-b because it’s lower in rank or something. In the context of the given sentence, it just doesn’t apply.

I’ll share an anecdote, okay. This is an excerpt from Dickens’ Bleak House, the beginning of chapter 1:

Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.

The word ‘wonderful’ there is not being used to mean ‘good’ or ‘exciting’, it’s leaning on an archaic definition that means ‘strange’. It might have positive connotations; I sort of feel like it does. It’s kind of hard to understand, though, unless you have that piece of information.

When I learned this information, let’s say about a month ago, my initial thoughts were “Oh wow. I didn’t know wonderful could mean that. That’s cool. I learned something.” And now, Bleak House, which is before my time, will be slightly less challenging to read. I’m sure I won’t, but it will be.

I’m not being nitpicky for no reason, I’m arguing in favor of literacy. Knowing that ‘accidental’ can be used in ways you don’t expect should be interesting, and not just flatly refused.

Further, I don’t see people who agree that the word is used incorrectly, I see people who are mildly confused by it. All of them understand what’s being said just fine. And all I’m saying is that they don’t need to be confused.

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about the word ‘literally’? About how it’s often used as an intensifier now and has lost some of its significance as an antonym to figurative. I’ll share my answer after yours.

The strange argument is that they meant to use definition 1-a, and they did. It is a perfectly normal use of the word.

I mean, I was hoping to, yeah.
I don’t much care about 2 or 3 either.

Uh, my argument is that my eyes see no devils yonder. If you’d like to know why, I guess, have a look at 1-a.

I should have pulled up a dictionary to begin with, honestly. I just thought I was arguing from a more colloquial standpoint. Which I would still defend; I love slang.

Mate, I’m familiar with the history of the word. I don’t read any negative connotations in the form OP is using.

I’m sorry, I don’t speak Latin.

AI will do whatever we do (on average) because that’s what it’s built to. Making mistakes on purpose may be a useful way of signaling our humanity at some point, but it’s an ever-moving target.

Of course :)

I wasn’t really sure if I was being helpful or not, so I’m glad it was of some use, haha.

this was a good and interesting article.

I thoroughly disagree with this. It’s arguments are all over the place and never substantiated. It is AI, though, so ah~

I think I know why that happened.

citation for claim that it’s the longest-dated climate dataset?

This comes off a bit curt, which can be read as a challenge. I don’t typically ask for citations unless I’m implying the other person either doesn’t have them or has bad information. It’s almost always an attack on their character.

I’m just musing from the sidelines, by the way, don’t take this as a lecture:

This is actually what the social function of filler words like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are for. They provide a base level of politeness that, much like a tone-tag, shapes the way the rest of the message is meant to be received. Sort of similarly, a question like “Is this really the longest-dated record? Do you have a citation?” shifts focus away from the person and toward validity, making the citation just a matter of course.

I think a journalist might choose the word ‘unintentionally’; inadvertently is a bit clunky, it lacks a bit of music, and it gives me a sense of slapstick comedy. This sentence, for instance, “Having inadvertently caused the death of her son,” sounds to me like the son died as a result of some Pink Panther bit.

I don’t think ‘accidentally’ here needs to feel judgy per se, but it is hard to imagine an English major choosing it.

I’m not reading any negative connotation at all.

For what it’s worth, those examples for ‘accident’ are being used as euphemisms to soften the blow of the intended message, and you can’t soften the blow without using soft words.

Car accidents have noun-ified the word a bit, though, so I do see where you’re coming from.