• Greg Clarke@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    The statement “the ocean contains enough water to fill a bucket” doesn’t mean the ocean only contains a single bucket of water. “The ocean contains enough water to fill one bucket” might imply that the ocean only contains one bucket of water but OP doesn’t specify a number. This is an interesting conversation on ambiguous semantics in English.

    • doctorcrimson@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      That’s a fair argument, and I suppose the average is somewhat close to one so it isn’t that misleading, but if aliens asked how much water was on your planet’s surface and you told them it was enough to fill a bucket, then you would be the asshole in that analogy.