"Everybody knows"
Aug. 23rd, 2019 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrCooking some eggs for breakfast I was reminded of the things that "everybody knows" and the many things that are never expressly defined to us but are rather picked up thru context.
An example is fried eggs. "Sunny side up" is pretty obvious. But a lot of people have only ever heard "over easy" as "the" alternative. Turns out there are *several* alternatives:
over easy
over medium
over hard
The "over" part *is* obvious. But the easy, medium and hard are not. Doesn't help that you never hear the second two in movies or on TV.
Easy, medium and hard refer to the state of the yolk.
So it's easy to grow up thinking that "over easy" means "cook the egg on both sides" and wonder why you always get a too-runny yolk. Finding out that it's because that's what you *asked* for is a bit of a shock.
Now consider how much else in your life you've assumed meanings for, based on context. And how much you have wrong, or at least very slanted because of the lack of explicit definitions.
Kids suffer from this a *lot* when adults jump on them for not knowing things that are supposedly "obvious". So do folks with limited experience or whose first language isn't English.
Politicians abuse this sort of thing to the max. If they word things the right way, they can leave different groups thinking very different things about the same statement.
An example is fried eggs. "Sunny side up" is pretty obvious. But a lot of people have only ever heard "over easy" as "the" alternative. Turns out there are *several* alternatives:
over easy
over medium
over hard
The "over" part *is* obvious. But the easy, medium and hard are not. Doesn't help that you never hear the second two in movies or on TV.
Easy, medium and hard refer to the state of the yolk.
So it's easy to grow up thinking that "over easy" means "cook the egg on both sides" and wonder why you always get a too-runny yolk. Finding out that it's because that's what you *asked* for is a bit of a shock.
Now consider how much else in your life you've assumed meanings for, based on context. And how much you have wrong, or at least very slanted because of the lack of explicit definitions.
Kids suffer from this a *lot* when adults jump on them for not knowing things that are supposedly "obvious". So do folks with limited experience or whose first language isn't English.
Politicians abuse this sort of thing to the max. If they word things the right way, they can leave different groups thinking very different things about the same statement.
