It makes sense to me. While I can write about the therapeutic benefits of natural antifungals like tea tree oil, I can’t (nor would I) claim that a product containing tea tree oil will cure or heal a fungus problem. Products making such claims must be regulated.
It doesn’t make sense if you are a literalist. “Therapeutic” is borrowed from latin, “therapeuticus,” which means “curing” or “healing.”
Anybody heard the radio ad for some car or other where the vehicle is described with the phrase “as ardent as they come” or something?
Can a car really be “passionately enthusiastic”? And more to the point, would you actually want that?
“Screw the red light! Let’s go! Zoom zoom!”
…“Yeah, sorry, officer, my car’s just, y’know, ardent.”
I’m guessing the advertising people were browsing websites and/or magazines and saw the constant references to “ardent car lovers,” a frequent construction, and decided in their tiny little brains that, instead of “ardent” being an adjective describing “car lovers,” that these people were lovers of ardent cars. Or something.
Bugs me every time I hear it.
I love this kind of thing! When I used to live in a suburb of Baltimore, there was a beauty shop called “Allusions”. It always made me go “WTF???” I’m pretty damned sure the shop owners paid good money to a professional sign maker to make that sign, with “Illusions” in mind. I’m pretty damned sure they weren’t really talking about “peripheral references to hair”. But you never know. I never did get my hair done there, so, who knows?
Or it was owned by someone named Al/Alison.
That could be something which really is essential (vitamins, say), but which you could get from other sources as well. Or you could get them all together in one convenient package, maybe together with some other things which aren’t essential but might be salubrious.
I dunno. Sure as hell sounds better and idiomatic than "his gear will “blow gamers away: figuratively.”
Keep on fighting the good fight, though. I’ll just sit here and use “literally” in a figurative manner like most English speakers do.
Hm. Possible. Like I said, I never went in there. If that was the case, it’s pretty clever.
Please don’t. Use any other word you like figuratively; any word but that one. With any other word, if it ever becomes unclear whether you mean it literally or figuratively, you can say so. But what do you say when you actually literally mean “literally”? “Literally literally”?
Shrek 3 – The Wait Is Ogre. Huh?
A few months back, the local (Salt Lake) Buick dealers ran a radio ad based on some national copy. I heard the national ad one time at the beginning of the campaign.
It said (paraphrasing):
With our turn by turn navigation system you can ask,
“How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” and not be told, “Practice.”
It guides you step by step to your destination, so now you can
get to Carnegie Hall even if you don’t know how to play the piano.
Not a great ad, but not terrible either. Then the local boys got ahold of it and decided to replace Carnegie Hall with a local landmark.
Now we have :
With our turn by turn navigation system you can ask,
“How do I get to Temple Square?” and not be told, “Practice.”
It guides you step by step to your destination, so now you can
get to Temple Square even if you don’t know how to play the piano.
HUH???
Play on words – the usual teaser poster for a sequel would be “the wait is over.” Not the epitome of wit, but it works ok for me.
I know Geico has already been mentioned, but I just wanted to comment on their claim, “15 minutes could save you 15 percent or more on your car insurance.” (the word “could” is very suspect to me). Hmmm… 15 minutes, 15 percent savings… I see a correlation here. I’ve resisted the temptation to call them and ask, “So if I spend 100 minutes on the phone with you guys, will my car insurance be free?”
That’s just because you’re too young. Many years ago, they didn’t sell new, and their slogan was just “Why buy new, when slightly used will do?” The transition to selling new stuff too was a major sea change for them, hence the new, over-emphasized second line.
However, I haven’t been a Minnesotan in half a decade, so maybe it’s time to retire the emphasis.
I know that, I got it. But, damn, that’s trying hard.
What works for some, doesn’t work for others, and vice versa. For instance, I like Toyota Tundra’s “We engineered the Quit out of it.”
Me and a zillion other English speakers apparently don’t have a problem knowing from context when “literally” is being used as a figurative intensifier and when it isn’t. When the action being described as literal could not possibly be taken by any sane or intelligent person as actually being literal, that’s a pretty good sign the word is being used as a figurative intensifier, and not in its literal sense.
“Literally” has a history of being used as an intensifier in English speech, used by plenty of esteemed writers like Fitzgerald, Twain, Dickens. This is how people talk these days. It’s idiomatic English, and it’s in the popular vernacular. I’m not going to alter my speech, except in the most formal of situations, because a few pedants have a bee in their bonnet about this usage.
I’m usually quite on the side of the ‘usage makes it correct’ crowd, just not this time. I think it’s because using ‘literally’ to mean ‘figuratively’ isn’t just a subtle shift of meaning, it’s a complete reversal.
I’m curious about this - could you cite an instance where Dickens uses it (not in character dialogue).
Are you one of the people who gets all huffy when those crazy kids* say “bad” to mean something is good? :dubious:
Ex: Aw man, that Camaro looks BAD!
- since the 1950s or so
Here ya go:
I believe that qualifies as a very loose (i.e. figurative) usage of the word “literally.” At any rate, that’s the quote that is usually pulled out in these sorts of arguments.