This word’s meaning and effect can be radically different.
About a year ago, Isabel Steckel texted her 30-year-old older brother about hanging out the following afternoon.
She received a one-word reply: Sure.
If youre bringing sure attitude, then lets not do it, Steckel countered.
And he said, lol, and I said, Im not kidding, lol.
The sure haters rose up to share how answering sure sounds passive and dispiriting.
A sure texterapologizedin a reply for the violence he had inflicted while trying to appear easy and breezy.
This is only the latest entry in a perennial and continuously divisive debate over what surereallymeans.
Clearly, we are not sure about what sure should mean.
Asking someone to hang out for me is like a very vulnerable move.
So when Im getting that sure, Im like, Alright, fuck it.
Im not doing it, she said.
The problem with sure is that it sounds more tentative and less enthusiastic than an outright yes!
or absolutely, especially when you do not have body language or vocal cues to reassure you.
Sure is sort of indecisive, or has kind of a hesitant quality to it.
Like, Do want to go to the movies?
Do you really want to go?
explained Georgetown University sociolinguistCynthia Gordon.
Gordon said the different meanings of sure might also be generational.
The younger generation expects more enthusiasm in texting in general than older folks do, she said.
She also noted that women tend to expect more of those explicit markers of enthusiasm.
But thats not whats going on, Gordon explained.
I would be less happy if I invited someone somewhere and they said, Sure.
I think Id want more enthusiasm for some social kind of engagement, Gordon said.
All to say: you could be sure, or you could be sure!
The choice is yours.This article originally appeared onHuffPost.
