Comment on definitely

EleventhHour@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  That’s actually helpful. Thanks.

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  • Dabundis@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Also helps to think of the word “definitely” as meaning “by definition”

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    • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah i don’t know yo spell defenition

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      • DannyBoy@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Did you mean “defenestration”?

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    • kn33@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That helps, but it doesn’t help me remember if it’s “definitely”, “definitley”, or “definitly”.

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• pixelscript@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s not like this superficially either. That’s literally what the word is.

  finite - to have a limit, be bounded

  The de- part is acting like it does in words like defraud. It’s not a negative, like you might see in detox, where it means to remove something or undo something. Instead, it simply insists something has been done, not unlike the suffix -ify. You’ve been defrauded. In a manner of speaking, you could say you’ve been “fraud-ified”.

  You could say something that has been defined has been “finite-ified”. The possibilities of what it could be were limitless, but you restricted them to something specific. You’ve made it finite. You’ve defined it. It is definite.

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  • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Is it fin-it or fine-ite

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• TheOakTree@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I always told people “definitely is spelled like infinitely, so just remember how to spell infinite”

  But I suppose “finite” is even better than “infinite” since there’s less to remember.

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  • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s more that finite is easier because it has the long I sound at the beginning which clearly designates it as I. The short i sound in most English dialects is a middling kind of “ehh” sound that can be confused for an e a lot when sounding out a word. When I misspell definitely it’s because I spell it defenitely.

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    • TheOakTree@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      My reasoning for why “infinite” would be easy to remember is because “infinity” is notably a word with only i as a main vowel (excluding the y)

      But I see what you mean too

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      • Benaaasaaas@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        My reasoning is that infinite is pronounced like definite, unlike finite which is pronounced nothing like definite.

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• Venator@lemmy.nz ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Defiantly going to remember how to spell it now!

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  • EleventhHour@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It also works for “infinitely”.

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    • Venator@lemmy.nz ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Indefiantly? 🤔😅

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