Such as “money can’t buy happiness” or “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Generally a false adage or something like that. All I could think of was “fallacious bumper sticker” which just sounds stupid.
“Fallacy” works. These are also adages, clichés, platitudes and folk wisdom, but neither really means “falsehood” per se. However, many of them just rationalize whatever: the money one is factually incorrect and exemplifies “sour grapes”, silver linings is not a bad idea but also not necessarily true, any number of things will not kill you but make you wish they had, etc.
Whoever came up with the “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” adage never met a person with locked-in syndrome. That’s where you’re totally paralyzed but also totally conscious. There have been patients where the doctors thought they were in a persistent coma, but they were actually going crazy trapped in their own skulls.
“Decimate” =/= “devastate”, but common misuse becomes common use, so here we are. 🤦♂️
Yep decimate is so commonly misused that our lovely descriptivist dictionaries are now incorporating the incorrect use as correct. It’s too bad, too, because the word had a very specific meaning which is now lost. The language is less useful for changes like this.
Language is fun like that. Kinda like how ‘literally’ can, and often does, mean ‘figuratively’, which has the opposite meaning.
The meaning of a word doesn’t change just because you use it incorrectly.
It does if lots of people use it incorrectly
That is literally how language works. Words only mean what we mean when we say them.
Language morphology, but you’re close. Except for that last sentence, technically. That’s some bullshit, right there. 🤣
So if I potato, you can ottoman?
If enough people agree, yes.
They don’t.
That’s actually the point. Nobody agrees that potato=ottoman but if enough people agree on a meaning it starts to become the meaning or at least a partial meaning. Maybe the point is moot with you but I get the feeling you wouldn’t understand the joke.
It annoys me that people keep saying “figuratively” is what they mean instead of “literally”. “Figuratively” may be the opposite, and technically correct, but the use of the word “literally” in this way is to strengthen a statement. A more appropriate correction would be “actually” or “seriously”, which holds the intended meaning. “Figuratively” is the last thing it should be replaced with.
Adage
How has nobody said this yet? Some guy actually said idiom.
Because an adage isn’t necessarily untrue, like the OP is asking.
Arguably, not necessarily. Adages are not truisms.
Bullshitism.
Platitude
ish
For example someone says “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” and you might say “that’s a questionable phrase.” or “I doubt the validity of that platitude”. But is there something specific to label it as, i.e. “That’s a [insert word]”
Myth
“Canard” is the term, as another commented. 🤙🏼
Colbert’s “truthiness” comes to mind
“Myth” is a word I’d end that sentence with.
If you’re not trying to be polite, “That’s bullshit” works perfectly.
Misconception?
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‘An old wives tale’
Not all wives tales are false. Most are, but not all.
false premise?
These fall under the category of “Half-baked Idea”. This includes any idea that obviously hasn’t been thought all the way through. Half-baked ideas can range from the absurd (e.g. “The Earth is flat.”), to the benignly optimistic (e.g. “Everything works out for the best.”)
A proverb.
Because your examples are actual proverbs, that might be considered true or not, depending on who says it when.
I dunno. Something being a proverb doesn’t make it inherently false, which is what we’re trying to define I guess
The examples OP provided are not inherently false because they are proverbs.
Truism
Bollocks.
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Common nonsense
I’ll call it that way.
Maybe a “specious claim” or “folk wisdom” or “empty rhetoric”?
The word I would normally gravitate to is a “truism”, however that’s not really used to describe something that is necessarily false… just something that sounds insightful, but doesn’t have any meaningful depth (e.g. “every cloud has a silver lining”).
