Comment by conductr
2 days ago
My or Humpty’s ability to choose meaning doesn’t ensure the listener will understand it the same way though. Even if you do expect someone to understand and feel appropriate context is present, misunderstandings occur regularly in all types of communications due to this very thing.
I have no idea what you just said. If I look up each of the words you just typed in the dictionary, they all have multiple meanings. Multiply that together, there are literally billions of combinations. There's no way for me to know which you meant.
In other words, to put the burden on the listener rather than the speaker to be clear about meaning, is bad communication.