Just to show we’re not only picking on our liberal brothers and sisters and their peculiar ways of talking, how about we add some definitions of words that those of a more conservative bent use and what they really mean.
When I was a student at Franciscan University of Steubenville, my friend Patrick Coffin and I developed the Steubie Student’s Dictionary, a lexicon of words and phrases that everybody used and what people really meant by them.
A few examples:
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“What I really feel like God is trying to tell you…” really means “This is what I want you to do.”
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“I’m discerning (a vocation to the priesthood/to the religious life)” means “I don’t want to go out with you.”
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“Would you like to go out on a date?” meant “Do you want to go the chapel and pray for our future marriage?”
And so on. So what words, phrases, and concepts do we use, say here in St. Blogs or among those of various conservative leanings, and what do they really mean?