Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
You should probably dampen your expectations on this one.
Why?
This is a hill I'm willing to die on, and as such my expectations are pretty consistent. Thus damping is not really needed.
Doesn't mean my expectations are realistic though.
Ha! Well I was just having a laugh. Expecting that you would prefer "you should damp your expectations" and that my construction should mean "make your expectations wet." And it turns out dampen is ambiguous. It means both moisten and dull, deaden, make weak.
Not only that, but most every form carries both meanings, and the "weaken" sense for the word damp predates the "humid" sense. Because the noun came first and it was specific to suffocating fumes in a mine that would extinguish candles, and people.
So my take now is that dampening means both "making weak" and "humidifying, moistening." Only damping is specific to motion/energy. And I can't recall encountering anyone using damping to mean "making wet."
Calm down there and dampen your expectations some. He was joking.