That is not what “unstop” means. You unstop a drain that is clogged, you don’t unstop something you want to restart.
You unstop a drain to make it go again. You unstop texts to make them go again. Seems fine to me.
It’s totally appropriate. They’re conflating their spam with a stream of shit that’s backed up, which is entirely accurate.
Better than my English second language teacher claiming that a “ship in distress” is doing fine because “distressed” is the opposite of “stressed” (and calling me into her office because I had corrected her in front of the class).
Ouch. Yeah, that’s bad.
That’s an invaluable lesson.
Tbh it bothers me that invaluable doesn’t mean “with no/little value”.
“Inflammable” is synonymous with “flammable”.
What a country!
It does, it means no value, as in priceless.
Not really, the term comes from a time that value equaled to price. The modern meaning of value is equivalent to importance though. No value means without importance, not without price, which is not equivalent to invaluable.
If they weren’t such opposed concepts one could even let it pass, but “invaluable” cannot be corresponded to “no value” anymore.
Years ago I learned (the hard way) that people do not like to be corrected in front of other people; leadership especially. It’s better to speak with them privately, if at all.
I was kind of past giving a shit. The teacher and I hated each other’s guts, but she couldn’t do a damn thing to me because I was top of my class (ESL at least) and represented my school multiple times in national competitions, and any attempt on her part to sabotage me would have been obvious. The worst thing she could do was mark one of my answers incorrect because I had used an American synonym instead of the British word (I think it was “trunk” instead of “boot”), and when I reminded her that she had marked it correct for two other students, she went back and crossed them out. My classmates knew and didn’t resent me for it.
I took an option to graduate early from that class mostly out of spite, but partly because I knew I couldn’t keep biting my tongue.
unstoprestopdestopunredestopantistartunredestop
I like this one.
disstopinstopirstopastopnonstopnotstopstopstopSounds like
htopalternatives lol
Stopn’t
Stop’ve
“Resume” would have been a better choice!
They quoted the term and defined their meaning in context. They could have used any arbitrary codeword.
Just because “unstop” is most commonly used with regard to plumbing does not mean that the term is exclusive to plumbing.
I don’t know, the MW defines unstop as “free from obstruction” or “remove a stopper”. You could say that the “stop” text functions as an obstruction or stopper, which you can remove in order to receive texts again.
Oooh, yeah baby. Right there. Unstop!! unstop!!
Counterpoint, messages like these clog my inbox.
It’s not the message, it’s the word “unstop.”
I know, just toying with the metaphor of a clogged drain.
I used to be a bit of a scold about grammar and spelling myself. A lack of style bothers me more nowadays. Everyone should feel welcome to play with our language. It doesn’t take a logodaedalus to construct an unglued apothegm, and we are all the richer for it; I am more disappointed by those who don’t try.
The problem is that language is meant to facilitate communication, not a toy to be played around with. This sort of thing does nothing to help people who speak English as a second language. It just confuses them more.
In this case, the message came from the medical group my former doctor is a part of. Sure, this particular case is pretty harmless (just mildly infuriating), but just fucking around with language for fun in such settings sounds like a terrible idea to me.
It’s unprofessional in that context for sure, and it ticks the “mildly infuriating” box. But, at the risk of giving any unintended offense, I have to take issue with the idea of language purely as a tool. It’s our culture, and language is every bit as much an art as it is a tool. Poetry, rhetoric, humour, all of fiction and important aspects of the rest of literature - these are not mere data, they are language as art, freighted with cultural significance. Even if we were to invent a means of communicating telepathically without language as an intermediary, art and playfulness is an intrinsic element of communication. There is no message from one mind to another that cannot be made worse by artlessness or numbness of feeling. And I sincerely hope I was able to make the point artfully!
In a professional setting, language should not be an art, it should be something to facilitate communication.
We are not talking about poetry or fiction or anything else here and I think that should be obvious. Do you really think someone living in an English-speaking country for the first time and only are semi-fluent should be getting poems from their doctor or their boss and should be expected to figure out what they mean? I hope not.
Sorry, it seems like I failed to acknowledge your point adequately. I cede fully the point about professionalism in this context, and agree that it isn’t up to snuff. I only hoped to stand up for the larger value of creativity and expressiveness of language in other contexts. I’m a fan of English, as I think you are too; to have a language as complex as ours is a high price, and I think it would be a shame not to enjoy the benefits. I know of no language more capable of shadings of connotation, and freedom of form, nor any so idiomatically rich.
Personally, I make a point to enjoy my language, and I don’t mind any newcomers getting things wrong here and there, as long as they manage to bring their own idiosyncratic creativity to it. Language is such a powerful tool that I feel the word itself has too mundane a connotation. I am obliged to write very boring emails for my work, and it is so stifling that I tend to spread my wings more in other contexts. If I seem defensive, it is because I do get complaints. I respectfully stand by it though, people should speak artfully more often - if artlessness in professional contexts is as much of a stylistic commandment as it seems to be, anyway.
You would have a point if they had said "to unstop texts from this number, reply with “start”.
But they didn’t.
They quoted the word and explicitly defined the meaning they assigned to it. There is no ambiguity.
I gave up getting upset by little things like that years ago. If I can understand the intention of the other person, then it’s not worth nitpicking. Of course I correct my children, but that’s because they are still learning and need the reinforcement.
All that to say, I’m much happier putting my sanity first.
I feel people are very smart and they would fix their writing if they only knew. At the same time, I worry people are not open to external review.
/c/badlinguistics
That is not what “unstop” means.
They should of stayed in school! 😏
Don’t make me
startunstop stabbing.Don’t make me
startunstop stabbing.
Unrestart
At least they tell you what it’s supposed to mean. My problem with people using language wrong is mostly a lack of clarity and when they sometimes insist there’s nothing wrong with it, as if understanding is on the reader
