Has "literally" changed its dictionary meaning?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Yeah I’m fine with that, obviously words change meaning with time, I’m not complaining about that. Using literally to mean something that really happened rather than something from a work of literature is reasonable. Its different but it adds meaning to a sentence.

My problem is with the specific usage of literally to mean figuratively (or literally literally as the old meaning still is used). So saying “I literally fell off my chair” has no more information than “I fell off my chair” as now literally could mean my butt literally fell off the chair and landed on the floor, or it could mean I was very surprised and figuratively fell of my chair.

22

Fair enough. But English speakers occasionally decide (in their finite wisdom) to use a word to mean two opposite things, and expect people to figure it out themselves (“Sanction” for example), or to not have a word for a particular common concept, and so require people to laboriously work around the problem (“I didn’t mean ‘you’ in particular; I mean ‘you’ in the general sense”), and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.

23

I agree it’s a natural evolution. All of the uses of ‘literally’ are natural usages (the OED lists 7 meanings, all with attestations more than 2 centuries old).

24

It works the way I explained that it works. I’ve added emphasis for ease of understanding: “they’ve generally done it in a way that skillfully intensifies a metaphor that is closely aligned with a literal reality”. What I object to is its gratuitous use as a meaningless intensifier by illiterates, which serves only to obfuscate rather than clarify or expressively enhance.

John McWhorter tried to defend this abomination in a recent book in which he asserts that English abounds in such contronyms, but his argument falls flat; as I think I’ve said before, either those alleged contronyms are not direct opposites and merely share a common root, or else they denote something so commonplace that the usual negating prefix has been omitted (when a cook says she is going to “bone” a chicken instead of “debone”, few would be under the impression that she is engaged in the veterinary activity of crafting a skeleton for a boneless chicken, which usage is in a different realm entirely from the fiasco of “literally”).

Indeed. And although it’s often claimed that when “literally” is used in this figurative sense, it’s always clear that it really is just a figurative intensifier, in fact there are many examples where it’s not clear at all.

25

Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown. The “literally”-is-an-abomination-unto-Og folks will never be convinced. It’s okay, as actual usage rules the roost. They can believe whatever they want and judge me accordingly. It don’t bother me none, only encourages me to use actual manglings of the English language to amuse myself.

26

Yeah, this. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Actual usage rules the dictionaries, but it doesn’t rule one’s preferred style guide.

As for mangling the language, I admire it when it’s done skillfully. But I’m allergic to illiterates.

27

But not literally Chinatown.

28

They don’t bug me none. Different strokes, I guess. Not everyone uses language the same way.

29

What bothers me about what I call “illiteracy” is that it’s often just the result of laziness – meaning that rather than put in the effort to make their writing comprehensible, some folks would rather just rattle off a misspelled ungrammatical stream-of-consciousness drivel, and leave it to the reader to do the work of making sense of it. That’s just rude. I have no problem at all with good writers having fun with language – in fact, as I said, I admire it.

30

As literal as possible.

31

I’ve argued here many times that “correct” language is the way that the group of professional writers and speakers use it. Journalists, book writers, speech writers, commentators, etc. I call them “good writers” for short. You can find literally as figuratively all over the place in their work. What you won’t find, with rare exception’s, is sticking apostrophe’s in plural’s. Lines are still drawn, but in different places than the old-time copyeditors would draw them.

Dictionaries are all descriptive these days and have been for the past fifty years. Language is vastly more casual culturally, and this is reflected in the usage of the good writers. Even here on the Dope, most writers are good writers, and the ones who aren’t stand out. Yet casual usage is the norm, except when somebody tries to make a formal point.

Any study of usage will show that outside of some technical terms, virtually every word in English has accreted, changed, or reversed meanings. Literally is just following in the footsteps of nice. Many of changes happened centuries ago; Shakespeare needs a glossary to get nuances that his audiences would grasp instantly.

Little in all that change is more common that the addition of intensifiers. Unique is unique, you cannot have more unique or very unique, so say the pedants. But that’s not how people use language. They want to indicate the shades of meaning and emotion to others. So not just unique but, like totally unique. That’s not laziness; it’s folk poetry. So is “my head literally exploded”. How poor and silly is “my head figuratively exploded” by comparison.

English never loses expression overall; it adds new nuances of meaning by the ton every century, every decade, every year. That does not and has never meant anything goes. The vox populi collectively decide what stays and is available to all thereafter. It’s a good world.

32

An eloquent and literate post, @Exapno_Mapcase, as you always are on the subject of language.

I will just say two things. I agree with you about “totally unique” and its variants. It makes no sense mathematically, but it does linguistically. And I’m find with that. The problem with “my head literally exploded” – and the reason it’s often brought up in these discussions – is that the expression itself is stupid and the result of lazy thinking. Throwing in “literally” as an intensifier is just adding linguistic insult to injury.

33

Except that your explanation doesn’t make a lick of sense. In what way is, “his limbs were literally worn to the bone” closer to “reality” than “my head literally exploded?” They’re both using “literally” to emphasize a metaphor that describes a technically impossible condition. One cannot work themselves until the flesh falls completely from their bones, no more than one can be so surprised that their head bursts apart in fragments. Neither is “real,” neither is “literal.” What makes one more acceptable than the other - besides being attributed to a writer widely recognized as being highly skilled?

34

Very well put.

35

I suppose in the final analysis it’s a subjective judgment, but the reason one is acceptable and the other isn’t is simply that it works; that is, the “closely aligned with a literal reality” means that it evokes a very appropriate image or emotion, and hence is good, expressive writing. The unskilled examples are not, and there the figurative use is just odd, and the contrary meaning potentially confusing.

36

In other words, bad writers write badly. But that doesn’t tell us anything about the appropriateness of any given idiom or literary device. Bad writers will also write bad metaphors, but that doesn’t mean that using a metaphor is a hallmark of a bad writer.

37

I would put it like this: writers who don’t know what they’re doing need to follow the rules. That’s what rules are for – to help guide the unskilled. Skilled writers can and do flout the rules when it works for them.

With regard to “literally”, according to the imaginary Wolfpup Style Guide* “literally” should be used to mean “according to the words exactly as written” except when a writer is using it to evoke a closely related metaphor.

* Currently adopted by exactly no one, but it should be! :wink:

38

I still don’t understand what you mean by “closely related metaphor.” Closely related to what?

39

I don’t have anything to add about “literally,” but I’m glad you wrote “raises the question” rather than “begs the question.”

40

I think what bothers people today is that the spoken language, another species, almost another genus, from written language, is being written and shared in print. In the past, the spoken language was preserved almost exclusively by good writers who tried to transcribe what they heard. Mark Twain was legitimately proud of his re-creation of a variety of regional accents. Other writers lacked his genius. What resulted were hundreds of pages of incomprehensible dialect in print, which may or may not have been anywhere near to accurate. In consequence, people who spoke this way were looked down upon as a lower form of humanity, not struggling with a foreign tongue but literally (ha) stupid.

Teachers bought into this classism and racism. The accepted notion of a school was to “assimilate” the young, implicitly meaning that the standards of white, middle-to-upper class educated speakers and writers were reduced to rules that, like the bed of Procrustus, forced all English into a set of “acceptable” forms, i.e., acceptable to a judgemental elite.

English has no rules for usage. Grammatical agreement, yes, if a bit fuzzy at times. The use of apostrophes, yes. Spelling, mostly. But usage, no. You can end a sentence with a preposition. You can modify an absolute with an intensifier. You can dangle a participle. If you listen to spoken language, people do that all the time because normal minds don’t plan out the ends of a sentence before beginning one. Listeners will understand. Some confusion may result, and some mismatches may be comical, but we mostly get it. I’m far more concerned when here on the Dope a person writes a perfectly coherent sentence and a later poster twists it into an interpretation from Mars.

Today, everybody is able to set down their natural speech and rhythms in print. Those are seldom what got taught in school. Some of it sucks, sure, but so did a lot of formal, prestige writing that adhered to every rule. The good writers I referred to need to use their finely honed perceptions and sort through the avalanche of words to decide what to keep, what to toss, and what to live with for the ideas and feelings that are valuable if awkwardly displayed.

OTOH, some people are just plain stupid. Unfortunately, they aren’t all bad writers, so that’s not a tell.