OT: Where did our language go?

Yes I've just seen your post, sorry about that.

One popular saying that annoys me is 'doubling down'. What does it mean and where did it come from?

Not quite. It means to make more extensive use of what you have to allow you to do other things too.

Such as, you bought a car to get to work more easily. So you "leverage" your ownership of the car by also using it to go shopping, etc.

It’s yet another attempt to modify the language by changing a meaning to its opposite. ‘Credit’ means you’re in debt, ‘Debit’ means you’re flush. ‘Four times smaller’ = a quarter. ‘Doubling down’ means doubling up, i.e. doing twice as much of something.

Where it originated? Probably the US…

Gotten is a proper Old English word, the past participle of get. It almost disappeared from use, but remains valid in the UK, while America continued to use it throughout.

Similarly closet being used to mean a small side-room for storage, was first recorded in the 1610s.

C'est la vie.

Looks like the 'mericans got to "closet" first. (Cupboard gay?) (We have "cupboard love", but that is a different use of the word.)

If you want to be really posh (or old fashioned) say sizzm instead of skism.

I like the words that mean the opposite to what they appear to, like "priceless", "invaluable", "disannul", "unloose". There may be others.

In business speak it means more than that. It means to use an existing asset to make even more money. Like letting part of your house as Air BNB is 'leveraging your accomodation asset base' Or using airports as super expensive shops is 'leveraging your investment in airport infrastructure' And selling your companies database of customers to your cousin in Kolcotta, is 'leveraging you database access privileges

Oh dear. Closet always WAS a walk-in cupboard, like 'Water Closet' WC. To be in the closet was simply to be out of sight, that's all.

Doubling down means when your investment in renewable energy has just been pocketed by a development company that has now vanished, you decide to invest twice as much in order to lose even more. Under the misguided notion that whether a renewable company succeeds or fails is a simple

Double or quits in essence

There is an excellent 19302 based Saint story in which the dying words of a diamond merchant are 'tale care of the blue diamond: It is truly priceless'. Which it in fact is, being made of glass...

-- Those who want slavery should have the grace to name it by its proper name. They must face the full meaning of that which they are advocating or condoning; the full, exact, specific meaning of collectivism, of its logical implications, of the principles upon which it is based, and of the ultimate consequences to which these principles will lead. They must face it, then decide whether this is what they want or not.

Ayn Rand.

Schism sh-is-m

No. It means f*ck all. It's just plain wrong to use it as a verb.

Heads I win, tails you lose.

"There is no noun..."

Yes, what I really meant was that they were British English words that fell out of favour in the UK, to the point that they were thought of as being Americanisms, but they are now regaining popularity in the UK because of their use in the US.

The numerical phrase that always jars for me is "a half of one percent". Why not say "nought point five percent"? After all, they are perfect;y happy to say "three point five percent". That's a British usage, often heard on BBC and ITN news.

And why is it that newspapers, both in headlines and in body text, seem incapable of using the % sign? It's always "3 pc". Maybe early Linotype machines didn't have a % sign...

I'm with you on 'levverage' which crops up on any TV series which is looking to the Mercan market.

However, 'skedule' is how the Scots pronounce it, much as I deplore it personally.

Go on then: define 'canny' :)