The xkcd from January 19th (thanks to Ann Burlingham)):
Um, technically, that sentence begins with well, not technically. But let that pass.
Technically serves to announce that some expression — like the word bug — is going to be used in a specialized technical sense, not in its ordinary-language sense, and that information is rarely useful in context; usually it just functions as one-upmanship.
February 10, 2015 at 9:41 am |
You’ll appreciate the mouse-over text at the original site:
“Technically that sentence started with ‘well’, so–” “Ooh, a rock with a fossil in it!”