Yom Kippur is no school

[conuly]

And it happened to be a Wednesday, which means suggested admission at the Bronx Zoo! So I took the girls and a friend up to the Bronx Zoo, and beforehand we went to a special program at a South Street Seaport printer's shop where they got to operate real, antique presses and make their own cards and a few bags labeled "FRUITS AND VEGETABLES". (And it was educational, too. Apparently it took quite a while to invent a workable roller for applying ink to the press, so they used to just sort of hammer it on. I had no idea!)

Anyway, while we were there one of the other children asked "In the past, did they use real oil, or was it, like, whale oil?"

Which seemed to me to be a strange phrasing. It was clear what he meant, but obviously whale oil is also real oil, right?

I chalked it up to youth, but today I heard it again from an adult - "Some of the characters in this sketch were real characters, like Spiderman, but mostly they were original characters."

How long has this been going on, and why haven't I noticed it before? (Now I'm sure to hear it all the time, of course!)

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

That's a bit Orwellian, isn't it? They've been conditioned to think the only 'real oil' is petroleum, so they don't even know the word petroleum - it's just, like, oil; real oil, not that 'natural' stuff.

Same with 'real' characters; what fandom calls 'canon'. One could argue that the original characters in a work of fanfic are more real than the canon characters, since the writer actually creates them, rather than borrowing from someone else's creation. Also, even the best fanfiction will never bring fame or fortune, because it can't be marketed.

[conuly]

I don't know if I'd say it's Orwellian. I didn't exactly interrogate these people on their views! Maybe the kid would use "real oil" to refer to cooking oils in a kitchen (or, for that matter, maybe he meant "petroleum or vegetable oil" in that conversation) and I don't know it.

I definitely want to observe this word a little more in its natural habitat before I judge it.