*puerile
*puerile
This is literally the opposite of what happened. “To damp” was used to mean “to moisten” in the 1670s, a hundred and fifty years before “dampen” started to be used for it also in the early 1800s.
As with many if not most of the pedants in this thread, you’re dying on a hill that’s actually just straight-up wrong.
Natural human languages always have ambiguity. There are plenty of conlangs (constructed languages) specifically designed to avoid ambiguity though if you wanted to use one of those.
If such a version of English were ever made, it would immediately gain ambiguity as soon as people began speaking it fluently (and same for the conlang if a community of speakers began using it fluently as well).
There’s been no meaning shift. The “possessive” and “envious” uses of jealous both date from the 14th century in English, and both senses were present in the ancestors of these words all the way back to Greek.
Same. Sauce ruins good fries.
They hated him because he told them the truth.
I really liked minutes to midnight. A lot more introspective and mature.