...bro... (Destiny)

by Claude Errera , Friday, October 30, 2020, 20:19 (1285 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Unable to eat it in the common parlance.

If someone is allergic to something, I'm sure they would be able to actually swallow it. But they would still go around saying "I can't eat fish" or "I'm unable to eat nuts" or whatever.

Physical was used to denote a biological barrier. Not that they don't have access to it. Not that they don't like it. But that there is a physical mechanism which makes it so.

Words are not actually so precise, and one must infer intent from context and cultural clues.

I'm not gonna belabor this forever, but I want to point out that there is a difference between

"physically unable to eat"

and

"unable to eat for a physical reason"

that almost everyone who speaks english would be able to discern for themselves. (That is: those two phrases are NOT equivalent, in any real sense.)

Sometimes we try to be efficient, and we end up just being inexact. Often, it doesn't matter. Sometimes, it does.