this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted, clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts: 1

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When people say there's been an "๐‘ฅ fold increase in such and such." They mean such and such is ๐‘ฅ times as big.

If you get something that actually folds like a sheet of paper, the amount of layers doubles each time. One fold = twice as many layers. Two folds = four times as many layers...

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[โ€“] sxan@midwest.social 83 points 2 weeks ago (13 children)

It's not "two fold," it's "twofold". And by extension, "threefold." The "fold" here is not an independent word with its own meaning.

[โ€“] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 58 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (12 children)

Yeah, 'number'fold words in modern English are actually linguistic hold overs from before 'fold' was a verb that meant to bend something along a crease.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/twofold

In a whole bunch of proto-English languages, fold or feald or fald or falt were all multiplicative suffixes (basically) attached to a number, which made a new word meaning to multiply by the number.

...

I'd be willing to bet this is also why the phrase 'doubled over' literally means that a person is bent, or folded at their abdomen.

You take the new meaning of fold (to bend along a crease) but replace it with the word that twofold literally means (doubled).

If you interpreted 'doubled over' as literally as OP is taking twofold, then the phrase should mean that a person was above something and then spontaneously grew a clone of themselves, or became twice as heavy or tall or something.

[โ€“] manicdave 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This is actually pretty interesting. I wish I could pin someone else's comment. Thanks.

[โ€“] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
[โ€“] Zagorath@aussie.zone 10 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

It took me way too long to realise you weren't asserting an unorthodox answer to the nondeterministic polynomial time problem.

[โ€“] sp3tr4l@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 weeks ago

haha sorry!

My wrist is pretty messed up, and sometimes, it basically seizes up, so I went back to 15 yrs ago txt message dialect...

And then after posting it I realized, oh that could be confused with... ah fuck it time to ice my wrist and do more massage.

[โ€“] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I read that as "NP != D" and spent far too long trying to figure out what the variables N, P, and D were in this context.

[โ€“] toynbee@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)
[โ€“] JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 weeks ago

When I saw NP that's where my mind went first... Hence my confusion lol

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