Has "literally" changed its dictionary meaning?

In My Humble Opinion
121

Nobody said that literally was never used in literature. In fact, the fact that literally has been used in place of figuratively for hundreds of years appears right at the beginning of this thread.

What people are complaining about is your constant critique of so-called bad writers who use literally without a literary aspect, those who literally use such phrases as “my head literally exploded” in any formal situation. That is the claim you cannot support.

While we’re at it, I should also ask why someone who claims to revere language doesn’t understand that dictionaries run years behind contemporary usage. What the literal fuck? One of the last things they bother to update is changes in subsidiary meanings. Few have the resources to do continual updates.

Oh, you might have noticed the phrase “what the literal fuck”? I didn’t invent the phrase. It has an UrbanDictionary entry, although it is not as common a term as “what the actual fuck”. Professional linguists note that such phrases fail to conform to standard parsings of grammar, but are used every day in casual speech and on social media. Can we just ignore the part they play in social discourse because some people consider them vulgar and would bar them from formal writing?

If you can’t guess, my answer is no. What the fuck, abbreviated WTF, has entered the educated vocabulary. You may deplore such usage but the term is useful in multiple situations and so is used by all levels of speakers. Such terms are subject to intensification, a process so basic to and standard in English that many unobjectionable everyday terms contain hidden intensifiers. (see Deutscher above) No one, no authority, no Grammar Nazi or language puritan, can stem the flow of that process. It’s innate to expression of tone, meaning, and urgency, the core of intercourse in the oldest sense. What the literal/actual fuck is intensification in exactly that sense.

An expression of surprise or confusion used when what the fuck is insufficient to convey the magnitude of the situation. The increasingly flippant use and associated devaluation of the query ‘what the fuck?’ has necessitated the creation a more heart-felt derivative.

Holy fucking shit! UrbanDictionary[!] understands the vital need for intensification and can identify the steps of the process in formal terms. You can howl from now to forever about how this devaluation degrades the language and removes the precious exactitude of terms that writers employ to create the sense of nuanced clarity that is the mark of great writing. Probably less than 1% of language is ever designed to be read in this way. The other 99% is rightly more much concerned with simple communication from one person to another.

William F. Buckley, who was good with words, once wrote: "A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” William F. Buckley was literally insane.

122

Again, it’s very difficult to tell when you’re being facetious and when you’re serious. Are you seriously suggesting that if someone said, “I can’t believe he literally lost his shit,” you’d wonder whether it was metaphorical–and that you wouldn’t wonder the same thing if the word “literally” was replaced with “actually” or “really”?

Please tell me this is another facetious comment I’m misreading.

123

I was engaging in a bit of hyperbole to make the valid point that “literally” isn’t seamlessly interchangeable with adjectives like “really”. “Really lost his shit” (with or without the “really”) is a bog-standard idiom in my dialect. I would not expect “literally” to be used in such a context. It would give me pause. It sounds wrong, and indeed it’s not concordant with any of the definitions in either Merriam-Webster or the OED, even if one completely accepts its colloquial use as a special kind of intensifier.

You are free, of course, to claim that both M-W and the OED are just flat-out wrong – as some posters here already have. Personally I do not subscribe to the Humpty Dumpty school of lexical semantics …

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

124

In other words, there WAS no confusion. Since your whole point is that using literally in this way is confusing, that’s not “a bit of hyperbole”, it invalidates your whole point.

125

That’s totally incorrect. That’s not “my whole point”.

Now, in point of fact, in the years that this debate has been raging (including in this very thread) valid examples have been cited of where such misuse can create confusion, and in fact I cited the lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower, a former editor at the OED, making exactly that point (post #102). That is not, however, the major objection to misuse of this word, although I confess that years ago I made a bigger deal of it than I’m willing to make now.

The major objection to the way that some people use “literally” as a banal intensifier – as one can see with a careful reading of the definitions in both Merriam-Webster and the OED, and observation of its use by skilled writers – is that it only makes sense as the intensifier of a metaphor when the metaphor is very close to the literal reality. Mark Liberman makes the same point. One can see how the word evolved from meaning “exactly as written, absolutely non-figurative” to the more hyperbolic sense of “virtually” or “almost” literally. It’s certainly not an all-purpose intensifier that can be thrown in front of any arbitrary incongruous metaphor and be expected to serve any useful purpose.

126

But, uh…
Just now (just now)
You said (you said)
You literally couldn’t get out of bed! (what?!)

127

Isn’t it? I come across it as an all purpose intensifier literally all the time.

128

No doubt. There are far more bad writers than good ones.

129

Speaking of intensifiers, I ran across one that I sometimes hear: “real, live.” “I saw a real, live bear in my backyard” is clearly intended to indicate the shocking existence of an actual bear (not that shocking in some places where I’ve lived for that matter). But sometimes you hear it used in other ways: “And then a real live truck drove straight into the 7-11” just indicates the shocking nature of the incident, not that a truck had become animate.

130

“Adjective”? It’s obviously freaking adverb, like “literally”. I will cheerfully accept any and all ridicule for this unthinking blunder. Apparently, I’m really losing my shit, or literally losing my mind, or something. :wink:

Neither usage is one that I particularly applaud, but it’s not something I’m going to get worked up about, either.

131

This is not a matter of bad writing, but rather of bad textual analysis. Yours is all over the place, self-contradictory, retreating into excuses of facetiousness and hyperbole when you’re called on the silliness, misunderstanding cites, and making claims with no evidence. At this point, I trust everyone can see how absurd it is, so I think I’m done.

132

When has the phrase “he lost his shit” ever been used to refer to someone literally losing control over their bowels? Do toddlers’ parents ever say, “Is there a changing room around here? Little Timmy has lost his shit.” Has anyone ever said, “I once got so drunk, I passed out and lost my shit”? “I tried those new potato chips that use Olestra, and they totally made me lose my shit?”

133

Literally never

134

But see, wolfpup claimed that was hyperbole, so we weren’t supposed to take it seriously. Or something?

I’m finding it easiest not to take any of his argument seriously at this point.

135

That’s correct. That’s what I said. I was expressing the sense that in my dialect, it would seem incongruous to use “literally” to intensify that particular metaphor. If the wording that I used, “… we would be inclined to think that perhaps …” is deemed to mean everyone hearing this would have no choice but to take the metaphor “lost his shit” literally, that sounds to me like a pretty disingenuous interpretation that is being contrived solely for the purpose of mockery. What I was saying is simply that it sounds incongruous.

I’m genuinely surprised that you went into a total snit several posts up over what essentially amounts to the fact that I disagree with you on certain points, all the more surprising when it was triggered by a post that wasn’t even directed at you.

The central point that I’ve made consistently and numerous times here is that I readily accept the established use of “literally” as an adverbial intensifier, but that it’s most appropriate when the metaphor being intensified has notable similarities to the actual reality, specifically to the extent that it evokes appropriate imagery.

Various posters disagree with this, but it’s consistently seen in most cited examples of good writers using the word in this way, including the examples from Richard Dawkins that I had not seen before. Most importantly, this is how most dictionaries describe the usage, the clearest example I think being the OED. If you’re going to accuse me of a string of imagined offenses including “misunderstanding cites, and making claims with no evidence” perhaps you have an opinion on the several posters here who claim (without evidence) that when multiple leading dictionaries support my view, the dictionaries are just wrong.

136

Penis literally ensued.

137

I have an opinion on them: they’re imaginary.

138

None of this, for example, is accurate at all.

  1. You weren’t saying that it sounds incongruous. That’s a very different statement from

  1. Nobody paraphrased you as “everyone hearing this would have no choice but to take the metaphor ‘lost his shit’ literally.” You’re calling people disingenuous, based on your own disingenuous paraphrase of other people. The irony you could literally cut with a knife.

  2. Your explanation for why “In that case – and only in that case” people would be confused about the meaning is wholly lacking. “I can’t believe he actually lost his shit” apparently engenders no such confusion (or, if you’re changing what you want to say, incongruity). That’s just as nonsensical as the supposed confusion in the first place.

I know you’re calling it a “snit.” Try “exasperation” instead.

139

A. You have never given even one example of bad writers using the exaggerated phrases like “his head literally exploded.” Since those are the ones you are most against, you need to cite who you’re talking about. That would help us determine whether you are talking about formal or colloquial writing, a distinction you sedulously avoid.

B. You can’t be referring to me. I said that dictionaries have not been revised to include the modern evolution of the term. This is completely different from saying they are wrong. Any book on the history of dictionaries - a fascinating topic - makes clear that dictionaries always lag behind changes in language, and the piece of language that lags the farthest is new senses of meaning.

C. What the hell is wrong with mockery? Even formal writing frequently contains mockery. Great writers often indulge in it. Not to mention that the writing you’re using as a strawman is normally a feature of colloquial writing rather than formal.

Literally three strikes and you’re out.

140

But they have? Or at least many have—I quoted them at the beginning of this thread. Or am I not following the right point?