[marzell]

Long before the richest man on earth bought Twitter to be his personal megaphone to help him prepare to become president in order to boost all his personal endeavors, the letter X has been used as a sort of contraction to replace common morphemes like "cross", "trans" etc, in places where the physical representation "x" likens to a cross or crossing of some sort, or in reference to the Greek letter Chi. Must we change our use of language to support this guy, too?

Xtian Xmas xfer tx/rx xor...

[alehlopeh]

You pretty much listed all the examples where that’s done (x-ing is also a big one, on signs), but there are way more cases where no one would ever use the letter X like that. I think parsing that kind of “syntax sugar” takes more cycles than a lot of people care to spare just to understand what a stranger is saying online. It’s too loose to be commonly applicable. Things like “Xmas” are accepted on a case by case basis.

The argument wasn’t made out of principle, either. If it were more widespread, it would be worth the potential confusion. It’s just not. I agree with that.

[int_19h]

I don't think "xor" belongs to that list, given that the "x" in it is a shortening of "eXclusive".

[weberer]

You need to be a natural-born citizen to become US president. Musk was born in South Africa.