The Generalist

Tag: Doublespeak

Total 6 Posts

Doublespeak: Universe and Atom

The words universe and atom originally had very specific abstract meanings. Universe referred to “everything that exists” while atom referred to the “smallest indivisible constituent of matter” (from the Greek philosophy of Atomism).  Over time these abstractions became concrete in their meanings. As the science of physics progressed people came

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Beginner’s Doublespeak: Equivocations

Doublespeak is a type of logical fallacy known as equivocation. Equivocation is the use in a logical argument of a word that has two or more distinct meanings. The purpose of using Doublespeak is to evade real debate by confusing or obfuscating. In any spoken language, words naturally change over

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