Idahoans Have a Social Media Battle Over the Meaning of a Controversial Word

It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone in Idaho anymore that we love the word ‘indefinitely’. We love the meaning of the word and we love the controversy it causes when we use it and someone doesn’t agree with our usage.

That’s an argument that will go on…indefinitely. I bet we can all agree though that the 'temporary' construction on Idaho roads in in fact 'indefinite' construction, since they have a timeframe but we all know it's a lie.

Just because you want something to be true, doesn’t make it true. So, even if you don't agree by the end of this story with our usage of the word, you'll at least (hopefully) understand why we use it.

Idahoans Have a Social Media Battle Over the Meaning of a Controversial Word

In a recent story, we wrote about what we thought was an important closure in Southern Idaho, but the point of the story was overshadowed by people discussing that we had said the location would be ‘closed indefinitely’. The verbiage was the exact words used in the announcement of the closure, but that wasn’t good enough for some people.

We were told that it wasn’t closed indefinitely, but it was only closed temporarily and they didn’t know when they would reopen. Which is just a rewrite of the actual definition of ‘indefinitely’ as printed in most dictionaries: for an unknown amount of time.

Get our free mobile app

The closure was temporary because it was uncertain, in limbo, and undetermined (synonyms for indefinitely). But, temporary means the duration has an defined end point and isn't permanent. Indefinitely is a more descriptive word than temporarily when the ending is unknown. Imagine if we had said it was temporarily closed indefinitely - heads would have exploded.

We get the confusion though. ‘Indefinitely’ lives in a gray area between temporary and permanent. It’s like arguing if a square is a rectangle - which it is - but why would you say rectangle instead of square? Well, because it’s fun to see people argue semantics. Even after writing this and sharing our proof and reasoning that the word wasn’t used improperly, we are certain some will still say we were wrong. But you have to decide if you will be stubborn temporarily or indefinitely.

Indefinitely Doesn't Mean What You Think it Means in Idaho

Indefinitely isn’t the only word we get wrong. Check out this list of other commonly misused words in Idaho.

RELATED STORY: Idahoans Need to Learn How to Properly Use Uncontrolled Intersections

Oh yeah, while you're mad at us telling you that you're wrong: you also don't do stop signs properly, are using uncontrolled intersections wrong, and 4-way stops don't work how you think they do.