it is what it is, seemingly uttered by every athlete asked to comment on a loss or a poor performance; now more and more by anyone having a bad day.
it's a totally empty and worthless comment. somewhere I recently saw it emended to, "It is what it is, except when it isn't, which is most of the time."
-joe (the old peevologist) friday
Latter-day? Like my sister says, she says: "there's always been things like this and things that are different." Peeve on, neighbour.
Pop, as in, "This painting will make the wall pop" (with color).
Yuck.
I'd hate for my wall to pop, sounds like it would make a terrible mess.
I've not usually used "It is what it is" for failures, rather for things that cannot, or likely will not, be changed, yet someone has chosen to complain about them even so. It's sort of a softer way of saying "Get over it", or as my sainted mother was fond of intoning: "That's the way the cookie crumbles!" :0)
I've not usually used "It is what it is" for failures, rather for things that cannot, or likely will not, be changed ...
That which is past cannot be changed.
I'm under the impression they're doing it all the time.
it is what it is is the new it's all good.
it is what it is
It seems to me that it is different from it happened in it has the extra implied info that it was out-of-the-control-of-the-utterer. Not quite as phatic as hello, but somewhere in between that and we was robbed.
>out-of-the-control-of-the-utterer
I don't think that's quite the way it's meant, at least not by those who've had a bad game [day]. to me it sounds more like, "yeah, I (or we) had a bad game [day]; <this sport [life]> is like that [hard] -- let's move on."
I don't think that's quite the way it's meant, at least not by those who've had a bad game [day]. to me it sounds more like, "yeah, I (or we) had a bad game [day]; <this sport [life]> is like that [hard] -- let's move on."
Could be. I've never heard it uttered by a sports person. I was just guessing.
It is what it is.
Also seems to have a sense of helplessness about it. We cant do anything about it-ness.
Maybe y'all have problems with the phrase because it's too generic. Better something like what the guy on Morning Edition this morning, in reference to some specific trial, said, "The evidence is the evidence ... and the proof is the proof."
“It feels good,” Pierce said. “I’ve been sort of in a slump lately, and hopefully with a game like this I can start playing a little bit better. But it is what it is. It’s going to be a long season. I don’t worry about slumps. I just try to do what I need to do to help this ballclub win.” link -
joe (it's all bad) friday
That purveyor of pessimistic empiricism, John Locke, wrote in 1690 "First, Essence may be taken for the very being of anything, whereby it is what it is." (
link and check out the verse in that footnote). I am just a little bit heartened by the image of a football linesman reading
An Essay of Human Understanding in the locker room (NPI). Although, on second thought, they probably default to Heidegger on
Being and Wittgenstein on language games.
congress mulls the issue..
link (note ref. to John Locke)
Lake Superior State U. weighs in..
link (note 'truthiness' is no longer banished)
congress mulls the issue.. (note 'truthiness' is no longer banished)
Has Colbert ever admitted that he didn't coin it?
>Has Colbert ever admitted that he didn't coin [truthiness]?
I doubt it -- that would be out of character!
-ron o.
Spare me the mindless rantings of the LSSU nattering nabobs. I'll mention just a few of their idiocies:
1. Authored. What are we supposed to say, authed?
2. Webinar. Geesh! Perfectly good portmanteau word.
3. Waterboarding. If you don't like the thing, ban the thing. Until then, leave the word alone.
4. Decimate. Excuse me. Are you going to complain about people being called candidates if they're not wearing all white?
5. Random. By all means, let's ban words that are fleeting slang. By the time the list comes out they are either gone already or have become a new, accepted meaning. It's bad enough wasting ink on these ravening peeves; it's worse wasting it on ravening peeves that are already irrelevant.
As for 'truthiness', I don't know if someone else coined the usage that Colbert made famous. I do know that's not the meaning listed in the OED with a citation from 1824.
My annual renomination for the LSSU Banned Words List: Banned words.
I still don't like webinar.
nope.
nothing else tastes like Limburger, but I don't like that, either.
Brie smells like a fully peed diaper... :0P
Cheater, the perfect portmanteau for cheese eater.
nope.
nothing else tastes like Limburger, but I don't like that, either.
Not liking webinars is one thing, not liking the word for them is a whole nother thing. How do you feel about the word
moist?
well, there's nothing wrong with the idea and practice of a web-based seminar, I just don't like the feeling of the word in my mouth. it sounds contrived to my ears; clever for the sake of being clever. the construction is perfectly fine, and makes sense, it's just yucky.
I have, at this point, and much to my chagrin, failed to come up with anything better.
moist doesn't bother me, but then, I'm a guy.
Getting back to author as a verb, another example would be usher as a verb, or are they going to suggest we say that an usher ushes? BTW, the B&M OED has citations for author as a verb dating back to 1596 in exactly the meaning as presently used. They call it obsolete but I guess it's risen from the dead.
>They call it obsolete
until they've finished the ongoing updates, those judgments are often Murray's. (I just wwftd-ized
cunctatory which was adjudged to be
rare (one citation) - not so much, now.
link
My OED is the one where the As were set in stone from 1882-1888. Surely they've done something since then.
Yup. Looked it up in the B&M Supplement. It says
Revived, chiefly in the U.S.: to be the originator of (a book, play, remark, etc.)
It gives citations from 1940, 1957, 1959, and 1967.
