I Meant What I Said

As those who know me well can tell you - I am obsessed with words. Whether it's word play, sentence creations, semantics, definitions, synonyms...  I probably spend way too much time thinking about words. You might be calling me a geek right now while you are reading this, and you would be absolutely right. The definition of "geek" is: "a peculiar or otherwise odd person, especially one who is perceived to be overly obsessed with one or more things including those of intellectuality."


And the fact that I just defined "geek" for you proves my geekdom in this area.

As someone who is a word geek, I often wonder if people follow the literal meaning of what I was intending to say or write.  Recently, I used the words "I meant what I said" to validate what was intended to be kind words. It quickly became apparent from the less than gracious response that "I meant what I said" ended up being less a validation of the words I used and more a validation of the interpretation they made of them.

Remember the SATs? Sitting in a overheated classroom, armed with a number 2 pencil, surrounded by classmates madly coloring in bubbles, with the entire "this is your future" cloud over all your collective heads. You turn the page to the "Reading Comprehension" section, read the first paragraph and realize that you didn't actually "comprehend" any of it. So you read it over again.  This process will repeat itself at least 2 or 3 more times before you finally give up and move to paragraph 2 since you needed to leave yourself time to answer the 3-6 multiple choice questions at the conclusion of the passage.

In real life (and by "real life", I mean "SMS", "email" or "Facebook"), there is no multiple choice quiz nor time limit. We can simply read a passage as quickly as we want and respond however we want. This response will often be completely off-topic and irrelevant. Of course, this will result in a similarly off-topic and irrelevant response by the original "author" and so on until basically you are left with a conversation of 30 consecutive off-topic and irrelevant responses. If the SAT "Reading Comprehension" section involved shooting off an off-topic and irrelevant response rather than multiple choice questions after reading each passage, we all would have aced that section.

So combining people's low attention spans and misinterpreting what we say, it seems that we're facing an uphill battle when it comes to truly comprehending each other's intended words. As this blog is still establishing it's purpose, perhaps it's not too lofty of a goal for me to attempt to use it to better our communications.

So in the spirit of understanding each other better, I've compiled the list below of common phrases cross-referenced with their intended meaning. In some cases, you will see the literal meaning does not match the intended meaning. This is not the fault of the communicator, but rather your fault for misinterpretation of their words. You can avoid this by clipping and saving the chart below so anytime people use these phrases, you can pull it out and decipher their actual intent.

What they said	What they meant
“I’m sorry”	“It’s someone else’s fault”
“I’m really sorry”	“You are making way too big of a deal over this. It’s someone else’s fault”
“I’m really really sorry”	“Leave me the hell alone.”
“Trust me.”	“I hope you can’t hack into my cell phone and email.”
“I trust you”	“As soon as you turn around, I’m hacking into your cell phone and email”
“I’m telling you the truth.”	“You are an idiot if you are buying any of this.”
“I’m not judging you”	“You are a complete idiot.”
“I’m a huge fan.” (regarding a sports team)	“I can name 3 players on the team.”
“I’m a huge fan.” (regarding a celebrity)	“I’m a stalker.”
“I’ll have one more drink.”	“I’ll be here for awhile.”
“I love you.”	“I’m drunk.”
“No really. I love you.”	“It’s possible I just threw up.”
“I’m leaving now.”	“I haven’t even jumped in the shower yet.”
“I’ll be over shortly”	“Feel free to watch the entire Godfather trilogy.”
“I’m on my way.”	“I’m not coming.”
“Can I borrow $1?”	“Can I have $1?”
“I’ll pay you back.”	“I’m secretly hoping you forget about this.”
“I was just thinking about you.”	“I totally forgot who you were until a second ago.”
“I was just going to call you.”	“I deleted your number off my phone.”
“I’m crazy busy.”	“I spent the last 3 hours on Facebook.”
“I’m heading to the gym.”	“I’m heading to the gym only if there is nothing good on TV, such as an old ‘Saved by the Bell” episode which I’ve seen 27 times already.”
“I’m looking forward to seeing you.”	“I’m already thinking of excuses to break our plans.”
“I had a great time. Let’s do this again soon.”	“I’m never calling you again.”
“I heard you.”	“I’m not paying any attention whatsoever.”
“I’m listening.”	“I’m listening to something other than you.”
“I meant what I said.”	“My words have no meaning.”

Have any additions to our list? Please add to the comments section below. If you have anything you want commentary or advice on, please send to pimplaskin@gmail.com. Be back again later in the week!