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$20K stash of smuggled fireworks secreted in 92-year-old woman's garage (hawaiinewsnow.com)
1 point by keepamovin on Nov 29, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments



"Secreted" doesn't mean "kept secret", it means discharged like a liquid.


> "Secreted" doesn't mean "kept secret", it means discharged like a liquid.

Haha, you may have been joking, but...Unfortunately, in fact, it does.

In English some words have multiple meanings even with the same sound or spelling. Natural language is not a computer programming language: not everything is unambiguous.

In a similar way, not everything is literal or explicit. This flexibility is one of the beautiful things about natural language.

Alternately, you may simply have been looking to create a pretext for a fight (sorry, I'm uninterested, please do some exercise instead or go to Reddit!), or perhaps need to improve your natural language parsing! :) haha

The interesting thing about "secreted" is that, in voice, we distinguish the two meanings via EMphasis (or emPHASis, for a joke). The meaning you mistakenly read in despite context, is pronounced, seCREted, whereas the correct meaning in context is said SEcreted. :)


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