Such as “money can’t buy happiness” or “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Generally a false adage or something like that. All I could think of was “fallacious bumper sticker” which just sounds stupid.

  • Bonehead@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    “Blood is thicker than water.”

    Usually said to convince someone that you should be there to help family regardless of what that family did to you. Unfortunately the full saying is “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”, meaning the ties you form with friends can be stronger than the family you you born into.

      • twice_twotimes@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        One of the biggest cliche revisionist histories I know of is “Jack of all trades, master of none; often much better than master of one.” It’s an interesting one because it’s been retconned twice.

        You’ll hear people respond to first line by saying “um actually the second line of the poem totally changes the meaning.” Yes, it did change the meaning when it was added in the 21st century, 400-500 years later.

        Then you’ll hear people one step closer to accuracy who correct “Jack of all trades” by reminding the speaker that it’s not a compliment because it ends with “master of none.” Except the master of none bit wasn’t used until the 18th century, and the second revision with the couplet may actually closer in meaning to the original!

        The original, simple phrase “jack of all trades” was first used in that form in the 16th century, possibly as a reference to Shakespeare, and definitely as a phrase that was intentionally ambiguous about whether it should be interpreted as a compliment or insult.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_of_all_trades?wprov=sfti1#Origins

    • littleblue✨@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Most of those old sayings have had the rejoinder omitted, which completely shifted their original meaning, in fact. For example, “Great minds think alike” originally closed with “but rarely do they differ”, etc.

  • amio@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    “Fallacy” works. These are also adages, clichés, platitudes and folk wisdom, but neither really means “falsehood” per se. However, many of them just rationalize whatever: the money one is factually incorrect and exemplifies “sour grapes”, silver linings is not a bad idea but also not necessarily true, any number of things will not kill you but make you wish they had, etc.

    • lemmefixdat4u@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Whoever came up with the “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” adage never met a person with locked-in syndrome. That’s where you’re totally paralyzed but also totally conscious. There have been patients where the doctors thought they were in a persistent coma, but they were actually going crazy trapped in their own skulls.

  • Spendrill@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    A Canard (French for duck) refers to something often believed to be true but isn’t.

  • HeathenPope@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    These fall under the category of “Half-baked Idea”. This includes any idea that obviously hasn’t been thought all the way through. Half-baked ideas can range from the absurd (e.g. “The Earth is flat.”), to the benignly optimistic (e.g. “Everything works out for the best.”)

  • scarabic@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Canard.”

    noun 1. an unfounded rumor or story. “the old canard that LA is a cultural wasteland”

  • Lafari@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    For example someone says “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” and you might say “that’s a questionable phrase.” or “I doubt the validity of that platitude”. But is there something specific to label it as, i.e. “That’s a [insert word]”

  • diegantobass@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A proverb.

    Because your examples are actual proverbs, that might be considered true or not, depending on who says it when.

  • Steve@communick.news
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    1 year ago

    I like Fallacious Bumper Sticker! I’m absolutely using that going forward. It’s better than Pithy Folk Ignorance that I used to use.

  • littleblue✨@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Decimate” =/= “devastate”, but common misuse becomes common use, so here we are. 🤦‍♂️

    • SuiXi3D@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Language is fun like that. Kinda like how ‘literally’ can, and often does, mean ‘figuratively’, which has the opposite meaning.

      • Trantarius
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        1 year ago

        It annoys me that people keep saying “figuratively” is what they mean instead of “literally”. “Figuratively” may be the opposite, and technically correct, but the use of the word “literally” in this way is to strengthen a statement. A more appropriate correction would be “actually” or “seriously”, which holds the intended meaning. “Figuratively” is the last thing it should be replaced with.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      Yep decimate is so commonly misused that our lovely descriptivist dictionaries are now incorporating the incorrect use as correct. It’s too bad, too, because the word had a very specific meaning which is now lost. The language is less useful for changes like this.

  • Mango@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Adage

    How has nobody said this yet? Some guy actually said idiom.