Of more importance is how everybody uses “begs the question” when he/she means actually means “prompts the question” instead.

No, it isn’t. It’s the “Prove me wrong, or else I’m not wrong” logic.

And your comparison is fallacious. Your statement was simply a comparison to typos and/or misspellings of homonymous words. That’s why I can ascertain the meaning in your phrase. Not because I was reappropriating new meanings to the individual words.

Provide me another meaning of the phrase. Prove its ambiguity. Once you do that, I’ll concede completely.

I see where you’re getting hung up. You’re debating whether “4 times shorter” has a meaning at all. But we’re well past that. It does. It absolutely does.

How was that parody or insensitive? It looked like homage and respect to me. Maybe I missed it.

What does ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ have to do with this? What does Sinead O’Connor have to do with Prince? I don’t get it.

Your example even seems to indicate that “4 times shorter” doesn’t have a meaning because “Soylent cat people Fred Tuesday or ostracizing.” has no meaning.

So the phrase has meaning. That is indisputable.

I dismissed your last response. It was drivel. And you are an idiot.

You can say twice as smart, right?

See, you still don’t get it. If the language term holds no meaning, then why do we all know that it means that the two values are 5k and 20k respectively?

And lots of people hate it when people like get your point across by acting like an annoying douchebag.

So you’re objecting to using “x times shorter”. Why? What else does it mean?

if “4 times longer” means you multiply by 4, then “4 times shorter” means you divide by 4.

As a math major and a lawyer (read: grammar pedant), this opinion is invalid. If something can be 4 times longer it can certainly be 4 times shorter. There is no usage rule (be it AP stylehandbook, Strunk, Brian Garner) that dictates otherwise.

This is the part where I link the story of the republican lawmaker who advanced that argument being restricted from interacting with female colleagues “for his own safety”

Is it safe to assume that they pay off auto shops to pass inspections?

Masturbation sounds like a great remediation treatment on paper. In reality, that ain’t gonna happen. An aching, tender, and half-flaccid penis attached to a pair of balls that throb in agony at the slightest touch are NOT conducive to rubbing one out.

I don’t think that “pedantic” quite covers my reply here, but it’s similar enough. I read her comment: