this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

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[–] MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io 43 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Except it literally does.

The oldest known record of that use is from the 1700s, and prescriptivists didn’t start whining about it in any significant amount until 100 years ago.

[–] Bob_Robertson_IX@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Upvoting because you are technically right, even though I will never accept that as the definition of literally - and I know this literally puts me in the wrong.

[–] tomenzgg@midwest.social 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

A very easy way to square all this (and what I assumed everyone understood to be going on before I ever heard of this discourse) is that people are just using exaggeration for emphasis (a very common rhetorical tactic).

Of course people aren't saying it's literally thing-they're-referring-to but that it has so much in common that it's "practically" almost exactly that thing.

I feel like people overcomplicate what needn't be complicated, sometimes (like people hallucinating a "fourth-person" pronoun to explain a convention perfectly already provided by current linguistical constructs).

[–] sexybenfranklin@ttrpg.network 6 points 1 month ago

I've certainly never met a perscriptivist who I held in higher regard than Mark Twain.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago (3 children)

You're referencing some rando uttering a word and claiming that its early use makes it valid, like people were perfect speakers back then?

Who's the prescriptivist now?

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 7 points 1 month ago

They didn't just utter it. They wrote it down, thus making it canon to language lore. 😌

[–] zqps@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

Citing some historical rando is as descriptivist as it gets.

The notion that “just because someone lived a long time ago, they must have been backwards, ignorant, or stupid” is one that needs to die a loud and public death. It is that line of thinking that leads people to believe that aliens built the Pyramids, Stonehenge, etc. because they are certain that folks back then weren’t clever enough to move large rocks about.

He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.

-- The History of Emily Montague, by Frances Brooke, 1769 (emphasis: mine)

The use in the figurative sense isn’t valid merely because of “some rando uttering a word” a long time ago. It is valid because it continued to be utilized with that meaning for the next 250 years and is still used and understandable in that sense to this day.

[–] ptu@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

First Known Use 15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

You’re own source states the opposite

[–] MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The opposite of what? I’m curious how you interpreted my words, because that quote does not contradict any claim I intended.

[–] ptu@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I understood you claimed that the first known use of ”literally” would have been used as ”figuratively”, but in the link it says it was used in a literal sense. But I’m tired so I might have gotten something wrong.

[–] MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Oh, no. I only meant that the use in the figurative sense was more than twice as old as any concerted movement against it. And even that movement is “old”. This isn’t some skibidi Ohio dreamt up by “kids these days”. It has a well established pattern of usage.

[–] ptu@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago

I see, that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification!

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible"

[–] MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Correct! It’s called a contronym, it is such a normal thing in language that they made a word for it.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

People are always saying English is weird. Being willing to die on a hill for eccentric word use is one reason lol.

[–] db2@lemmy.world 28 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Literally literally means literally.

[–] elevenbones@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago
[–] foggy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It also means "in effect; virtually".

[–] orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 month ago

Shower thoughts = casual observations about shit everyone should know.

[–] mhague@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (3 children)

People say it's freezing outside, but it's a few degrees above water becoming a solid. What gives?

They say they're starving even though they just haven't eaten all day.

People need to follow the rules when it comes to words or else we descend into chaos. It's literally a highway to hell!

[–] SaltSong@startrek.website 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Right, that's "speaking figuratively." There are rules for that.

But a word that means the opposite of what it means is not a useful word.

I'd hate to find a box in my lab marked "inflammable."

[–] my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Plenty of words mean the opposite of themselves, so much so that there's multiple words for it; autoantonym, contranym, or Janus words.

This morning my alarm went off so I turned it off.
I wanted to buy a new console as soon as it was out but they were all out.
Two people were left so I left.
I fought with Bob over chores, but I fought with Bob in the war.

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

That's actually pretty cool.

[–] SaltSong@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago

I'm aware of the existence of contranyms. None of the examples you gave apply, as they just have different meanings, or the same leaving with different connotations.

[–] Bob_Robertson_IX@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Or a letter from my college saying that my club has been "sanctioned".

[–] SaltSong@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago

Yea. Not helpful.

[–] voracitude@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Context is as important to language as syntax. If you see a box marked "inflammable" and the box is made of cardboard, you know it's quite inflammable. If it's made of metal, most people would think it's inflammable, but if you're in a lab you've probably got a few ways to prove them wrong.

[–] SaltSong@startrek.website 1 points 1 month ago

Context is as important to language as syntax.

Context is important to the message, yes. But if I need the context to understand a particular word, I would understand the message just as well without that word.

[–] spankmonkey@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

Those are exaggerations, not comparisons.

[–] Worthess@discuss.online 1 points 1 month ago

If it's 32° it's literally freezing outside(literally), 36° freezing outside (hyperbole)

[–] oyo@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Sounds like something that literally Hitler would say.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

I don't think he spoke enough English to understand what "literally" means, so I'd guess not.

[–] Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 3 points 1 month ago

What a hot take.

[–] d00phy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

English is fluid. Give it time.

[–] kelpie_returns@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sure, but you can literally use "literally" figuratively and people will still know what you mean

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's what the word "figuratively" is for. You don't say fat to mean figuratively thin.

[–] kelpie_returns@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

The way I see it is that language inevitably evolves over time. Not all of those changes make sense to everybody, and not everybody likes them, but that they will keep occurring will stay true as long as language is what we use to communicate.

It's all approximation anyway, so I just don't think it matters very much as long as we understand each other. To each their own though.