Deepity

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A "deepity" is a shallow or even utterly meaningless statement, designed to sound deep and profound. Two primary methods of creating deepities is through equivocation or dichotomism.

Depending on context, the same statement may or may not be a deepity. Take for example the notion that "love is a four-letter word". Such a statement can be either a bitter joke about a failed affair, or a revelation that love is actually a bad thing. Either way, the statement is based on the equivocation of equating "four letter word" in the literal sense of a word that has four letters with "four letter word" in the metaphorical sense of being a dirty word. Such an equivocation makes no sense whatsoever. Are all words with four letters bad words? And what about words that have different numbers of letters in different languages? In Swedish, love is actually a six letter word called "kärlek". As long as you think about it for even a single second, the equivocation is pure nonsense. Being pure nonsense in itself is fine for a joke. Or for a metaphor that is given meaning by context rather than having any meaning in its own right. But not okay for something that is supposed to have any meaning in its own right.