100TWC - Day 26: Forever and a day

Try as I might I cannot get past the hyperbole of this topic. "Forever and a day" might only be "one of those sayings" to most people, but to a dyed-in-the-wool pedant like me it's an irritating reminder of how meaning is lost through overuse, or how casually words are thrown around without, it seems, conscious thought.

Forever is, by definition, infinite. It means the same as eternity. The whole of time. And, as with all infinite numbers, adding one to them doesn't make any difference. Forever and a day is, literally, no longer than forever. So while the massed populace thinks they're expressing something that means they're going the extra mile, doing something more, making a special effort, actually all they're communicating is their paucity of imagination or understanding.

Here's another: 110%.

I gave it 110%. No you didn't. You can't. If you've somehow managed to do more than you did last time, all that means is you gave less than 100% last time. Or alternatively, that your capacity to give was smaller back then, and you gave 100% at that time, and THIS time you have an increased output and you're giving 100% of that. In the same way that eternity, or forever, means the whole of time, 100% means the sum total of whatever it is you're talking about.

Imagine eating 110% of a cake. It's impossible, right? Once you've eaten 100% of the cake there is no more cake. Unless you've hidden a second cake somewhere and you've stuffed 10% of that down your gullet as well. But that's a different cake. It's not an extra 10% of the first cake. That would be like having your cake and eating it too. Which if I was feeling like writing another diatribe on physics might lead me on to a debate about the impossibility of creating (or destroying) matter (or energy). But I won't stray down that path.

In fact since I've been sitting here staring at the screen for the last two minutes with not even an extra 1% of an idea of where to take this argument next, it appears I'm not going to be straying down any path. Even the one I thought I was on. Maybe I should just call it a day. Since I've been arguing against ever saying "forever and a day" we could agree that the "day" we're going to call it is the day we've just subtracted from "forever and a day."

Makes no difference to me. Or you for that matter. Because in the same way you can't add a day to forever, you can't take one away either. Infinite numbers, eh? I could write about them forever...