• SaltSong@startrek.website
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        9
        ·
        9 hours ago

        I’m being accurate. “Knots” is “nautical miles per hour,” as you correctly described.

        • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          6 hours ago

          All you’re doing is being a grammar nazi to someone who at most said the equivalent of “$30 million dollars”, which is technically, thanks to the dollar sign, “thirty million dollars dollars”.

          You knew what they meant. I knew what they meant. Everyone knew what they meant. There was absolutely zero ambiguity, so you just come off looking like a prick.

        • marcos@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          9 hours ago

          If we are being really pedantic. Knots is a measure of distance, and the fact that people have been using that wrong for several centuries does not turn a rope tied at one point into a time-changing object.

          • SaltSong@startrek.website
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            2 hours ago

            Knots is a measure of distance, and the fact that people have been using that wrong for several centuries

            We’ve only been sailing for “several centuries.” How long was it a measure of distance before people started using it wrong?

          • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            6 hours ago

            fact that people have been using that

            The way language works is that people use things and they become correct.

            There’s things I hate, too, like “yea” now being a spelling for “yeah”. But it’s useless to fight it.

    • NoblePutty@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      12 hours ago

      I think there point is that knots is not a measurement of distance over time so you can’t technically travel in knots per hour.