How can one word have essentially opposite meanings? "Minute" may refer to a short period of time, as when you ask someone on the phone a question and they hold up their index finger saying "Just a minute..." or when you are in a 1 stall rest room and you yell to the person baning on the locked door "I'll be out in a minute!" However, more recently "minute" has been used to refer to a LONG period of time, as in "Damn, State needed that today...They hadn't won in a MINUTE" or when standing in a slow moving line and one remarks to the person next to them "Damn, this line is taking a MINUTE" How can a single word refer to both a short period of time and a long period of time?

2/20/2010 4:55:19 PM

Only faggots use minute to refer to a long time.

2/20/2010 4:56:24 PM

i haven't though about the use of "minute" in a hot minute...thanks for taking a minute to type this out so we can all ponder it for a minute

2/20/2010 4:56:44 PM

really? this is the kind of shit that you sit around and think about?

my testicles just grew three sizes.

2/20/2010 4:57:12 PM

dicotomy

2/20/2010 4:59:24 PM

dickotomy

2/20/2010 5:01:54 PM

Only uneducated dumbasses use the latter versions of it.

2/20/2010 5:05:48 PM

Quote :

""Damn, State needed that today...They hadn't won in a MINUTE" or when standing in a slow moving line and one remarks to the person next to them "Damn, this line is taking a MINUTE" How can a single word refer to both a short period of time and a long period of time?"

who the fuck says this????

2/20/2010 5:06:33 PM

Quote :

"How can one word have essentially opposite meanings?"

A good example is cleave. It means both to 'split apart' as in a "hot knife cleaves through butter" and to 'join together' as in "may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."

2/20/2010 5:06:39 PM

aloha

2/20/2010 5:08:08 PM

^^^ tons of people. My guess would be that you don't spend a lot of time around Americans / American slang.

2/20/2010 5:08:24 PM

Quote :

"Only faggots southerners and mountain folk use minute to refer to a long time."

2/20/2010 5:10:23 PM

I live in the mountains and I never heard that till I went to state. The one guy I know who used minute like that was a guido.


I mean maybe southern mountain people say "I'll be a minute" to mean a short time, but end up taking a long time because they are slow as hell.

2/20/2010 5:12:53 PM

8^ I realised after I posted that I forgot the "h" in dichotomy...sorry guys

2/20/2010 5:14:26 PM

2/20/2010 5:32:23 PM

First time I heard that I was playing Playstation over someone's house and someone said "You've been on that game for a minute". I said "Yeah". It wasn't until about 4 hours later that I realized what he meant.

2/20/2010 5:37:21 PM

Quote :

"^^^ tons of people. My guess would be that you don't spend a lot of time around Americans / American slang."

For the past 7 years, unfortunately no.

But for 7 years before that, I spent most of those 7 years with Americans of all races and backgrounds in the North and in the South, but never heard it used like that.

2/20/2010 5:39:07 PM

Don't know what to tell you man. Language changes...

2/20/2010 5:39:59 PM

Quote :

"However, more recently "minute" has been used to refer to a LONG period of time"

nah its nothing recent...people have been doing this for a minute

2/20/2010 5:40:14 PM