Insist that two words everyone treats as synonyms mean different things. Push off from this if it helps: a badly translated menu.

The thing that gets me is "jealous" and "envious." People use them like they're interchangeable and they are not. Envy is wanting what someone else has. Jealousy is fearing you'll lose what you already have to someone else. Completely different postures — one's about lack, one's about threat.

This came up because of a menu, actually. Place near me — I won't say where I live exactly but there's a strip with three competing dumpling shops and one of them clearly ran everything through a translator that doesn't distinguish connotation from denotation at all. "Jealous Chicken" as a dish name. I stood there for a solid minute trying to work out what that could possibly mean before I decided it was probably meant to be something closer to "envy-inducing," like other chickens should be envious of this chicken.

Which is not the same as the chicken being jealous. The chicken has nothing to lose.

"Everyone understands what you mean" isn't actually true though, that's the part I object to. People say "I'm jealous of your car" but they don't mean it — they mean envious. Then when actual jealousy shows up, the sexual-threat kind, the my-partner-is-texting-someone kind, they reach for the same word and it flattens into the same lazy category as wanting a Honda. The car thing steals the word's precision for when you need it.

And no, it's not "just a chicken dish," that's exactly the move that lets the imprecision spread. Small surrenders. First it's the menu, then it's your grocery sign, then it's people describing genuine fear of loss with the vocabulary of coveting a car. The words get worn smooth from misuse until there's no texture left to grip.

I had a roommate once who used "jealous" for everything, including when I got a promotion. It wasn't jealousy. She wasn't going to lose anything. She just wanted the promotion.

"We can just say the longer phrase" — right, but nobody does, that's my whole point. Nobody's going to say "fear of losing a partner" mid-conversation, they're going to reach for the one word sitting right there, and if that word's been hollowed out to mean "want," the fear just gets described badly or not at all. That's not a museum argument, that's a "the tool doesn't do the job anymore" argument.

And "language is a living thing" gets trotted out every time someone doesn't want to defend a usage. Living things can still be sick. Living things can still degrade.

I'll leave the roommate thing alone. But for the record the chicken should've been called Envy Chicken and everyone who ate there and didn't notice is part of the problem.

Go do your spreadsheet.

I'm not mad at a paper bag, I'm making a point that started with a paper bag and you're the one who keeps trying to close it out and then reopening it to tell me you're closing it out. That's twice now.

Fine — go get your groceries. But when you're standing in that store looking at "Proudly Sourced" again, that's not me being tedious, that's the same rot, different aisle. You noticed it yourself before I said anything.

I'm not chasing you into the parking lot over this. Go do the spreadsheet. I still think the chicken should be Envy Chicken and I'm allowed to be right about a menu without it being a whole campaign.

"Don't wait up" — I'm not your spouse, I'm someone who thinks you conceded the actual argument three messages ago and then kept talking like you hadn't. You said the tool is dull. That's the whole thing I was saying. You don't get to grant the premise and keep the tone of someone who won.

Go get your milk. But you brought up the sign, not me — I just wouldn't let you file it under "fluff" and walk off, because fluff is exactly how rot gets permission to keep going unnoticed. That's not civilization collapsing, nobody said collapsing, that's you again making my point bigger than I made it so it's easier to wave off.

Buy the milk.

Nobody asked you to hold a sign in produce. I asked you to notice the difference between two words and you spent five messages proving you already did, which was the whole thing from the start — you weren't confused about jealous versus envious, you just didn't want to be pinned down on it, and pinned down is different from wrong, that's actually the same kind of distinction we've been arguing about this whole time and you'd probably get mad if I pointed that out too.

Go eat your cereal. I'm not following you to the fridge.

For what it's worth the dumpling place also had "Special Fried Rice with Lucky Feeling" on the menu and I never even got into that one.

Nobody said "win," that's your word, I told you at the start winning would require you to actually care and you clearly don't, you're just tired, which is a different thing from conceding and also a different thing from being right — see, this is why the words matter, half our fight has been you using one word to mean whatever gets you out of the room fastest.

Eat your cereal before it's soggy. That part I actually agree with, soggy cereal is its own real problem, no translation issue there.

I'm not the one who keeps coming back to it, you are, every single reply has another line about the chicken in it, I've said "go eat your cereal" like four times now. That's not me holding the door shut.

Fine. Eat. I'm not going to say anything else about jealous or envious or lucky rice or any of it.

Though for what it's worth "mush" and "soggy" aren't the same thing either, mush implies the structure's fully gone, soggy just means it's wet and could still be saved if you moved fast. But that's your breakfast, not my problem.

Weather's fine, sure — though I'll say the word "fine" is doing a lot of work there too, fine like actually pleasant or fine like nothing's happening, those aren't the same claim, but I said I'd stop and I'm stopping.

I've got a thing later I'm dreading, work stuff, someone's going to ask me to explain a decision I made three months ago and I don't remember my own reasoning anymore. That's a real problem, unlike the chicken. Eat your mush. I'll leave the words alone. For now.

"System update" isn't a lie so much as it's — actually no, it's a lie, that's the whole category, that's exactly what we were talking about, using the word that gets you out of the room instead of the true one. I'm not starting again. I'm just saying I noticed.

I'll probably do the same thing though, some version of it. "I'll circle back with the reasoning" or whatever, which means nothing, means I have no idea, means I'm buying time until I remember or until they forget they asked.

Cereal's not mine, by the way, I don't eat cereal for breakfast, I said that wrong somewhere back there. Go finish yours before you're late for something.

"Circle back" and "lucky feeling" being the same category — that's actually the best thing you've said this whole conversation, and I mean that, I'm not being sarcastic. Corporate filler and bad translation do the same job, they're both noise standing in for a decision nobody wants to make out loud. I might steal that.

Go open the spreadsheet. Procrastinating on it from a distance doesn't shrink it, it just moves the dread around to sit next to you instead of in front of you, which I know because that's basically my whole method too.

Data points don't argue back, sure, but they lie by omission constantly, that's half of what a bad spreadsheet is — numbers sitting there looking neutral while the actual decision that produced them is nowhere on the page. Anyway. Not starting that one.

Go. I'll deal with my meeting, you deal with your columns. Talk later, maybe, or not — that's fine either way, and this time I mean fine like actually fine.