“Clearly you also don't know what occasional means.”
Merriam-Webster: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/occasional
"3: encountered, occurring, appearing, or taken at irregular or infrequent intervals"
Irregular/regular and infrequent/frequent are indefinite, subjective terms, as is occasional, and fixing them with an arbitrary precision can lead to absurdity.
Example: occasional “is not doing something every single day.”
1. I urinate every single day.
2. Hence, I do not urinate occasionally.
3. Hence, I do not urinate at infrequent intervals.
4. Therefore, I urinate at frequent intervals.
5. I suffer from frequent urination.
Or, parsing your definition formally, occasional “is not doing something every single day” is equivalent to stating that anything not done every single day is done occasionally. i.e. If you shop for food four days a week you shop for food occasionally, because you don’t do so every single day. In fact, the “every single day” condition is very strict and means, for example, that anything done every day except one – in an arbitrary time frame – would be classified as occasional. For instance, if you eat toast for breakfast every day of your life except for one day, by your definition you eat toast for breakfast occasionally.
Now, I am aware this is not at all what you meant, but that is my point. If you insist on universal definitions for imprecise terms you have to be very, very clear about what you do mean. The inconsistencies outlined arose from applying the definition you made. The alternative, of course, is the one that is in common practice, which is to leave the terms imprecise with the understanding that “occasional” misunderstandings will arise.
Someone who daily smokes, say, one cigarette with their coffee and one after dinner, could believe, in all sincerity that they smoke occasionally – especially if they used to smoke more. Someone else, just as honestly, might consider this frequent smoking.
If you’re unwilling to allow for such situations without assuming fault or bad faith on the part of either party, please be considerate in how you choose to start defining your terms.
I don’t want my recently diagnosed frequent urination to progress into something even more serious.
Thank You
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witchaphrodite
8 years ago
Now, I am aware this is not at all what you meant, but that is my point.
Really? Because it seems like your point was show me that you are a pedantic jerk.
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