We have had literally thousands* of threads on this topic. And I have in the past suggested that there’s a major distinction to be made between a competent writer’s use of “literally” to mean something closely analogous to the phenomenon being implied (Fitzgerald’s “she literally glowed”, for example, being closely aligned with metaphors like “positively radiant” and “beaming with happiness”) versus an illiterate moron’s misuse of the term like “my head literally exploded” in which there is no such analogy with the detonation of some sticks of dynamite. The latter is simply an abuse of the language that arises from the misapprehension that “literally” is just a generic intensifier, like a profanity.
My point was that the OP’s two examples are not good examples of egregiously “bad” usage of “literally.” If I’m scratching my head figuratively, I am also often scratching my head literally.
I’m having trouble following the logic here. Is your argument that “literally glowed” is acceptable because there are a lot of other metaphors that express broadly the same concept, and “my head literally exploded” not acceptable because there aren’t any other metaphors that express a similar sentiment?
Often? What does that mean? Are you scratching your head or not?
It appears that when you say you’re doing something literally, you mean you’re either doing it or you’re not doing it. But there’s no way of telling because you don’t understand how to use the word.
What are you asking me? It wasn’t my quote in the OP.
In the example given, the speaker could very well be referring to having literally scratched es head, so it’s not really a good example of incorrect usage.
No, it doesn’t appear so, not if you’re reading what I’m actually saying.
Yeah, it’s almost as if you have to read for context to understand when someone is speaking hyperbolically or not. You seem, in general, to be able to handle this task with very nearly every single other word in the English language. I think you’ll be able to handle it when people use “literally” hypebolically.
I don’t think the argument that “We fought a word definition war but we lost, so we have to just accept that we lost” is valid. “Literally” is not like other words. The word “gay,” for instance, used to mean “happy” but now means “homosexual.” Okay. So that’s that.
But “literally” is different. It is akin to “exact.” Imagine how you would feel if the word “exact” were taken to mean “approximate” or “so-so” instead of…exact. Where an engineer who says, “This bridge needs to be exactly 286.3 meters long” is now thought to be saying, “This bridge only needs to be somewhere in the vicinity of 286 meters.” Or a police chief who says “We have exactly 200 missing people on our list” is taken to mean “more or less that number.”
“Exact” is also often used in a non-literal fashion. For example,
“I think we should repeal this particular regulation.”
“Oh, so you think that companies should be able to do whatever they want without consequence?”
:rolleyes: “Yes, that’s exactly what I think.”
The hyperbolic use of the word to add color may be two centuries old, but I learned the word growing up and literally learned that ‘literally’ meant ‘literally.’ If ‘literately’ meant ‘figuratively’, shouldn’t my teachers have taught me so?
Dickens may have enjoyed writing colorful language in the 19th century, but the phenomenon that people literally seem to no longer know what ‘literally’ meant seems much newer.
But yeah, I’ve conceded that language operates on democratic principles and the majority have spoken. Still … Get off my lawn! (figuratively speaking).
Then exact would have a colloquial mean of ‘approximately’ and a term of art meaning in civil engineering and policing. Hardly unusual.
I’m genuinely curious. When you look up a word in a dictionary, do you think it is more helpful to get a definition that demonstrates how the current general populace uses the word, or how the lexicographer who wrote that entry thinks that word should be used?
Yes, I’m sure they did teach you that. I suspect they also taught you that splitting infinitives is improper. They might also have told you that Columbus was the first person to discover North America. Possibly, they told you that the Civil War was about states rights. They might even have told you that (as one of my teachers told me) that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly.
No disrespect to the teaching profession, but they’re human. They get stuff wrong.
There is no such phenomenon. People who use “literal” in a non-literal sense aren’t ignorant about what the word means. They’re just using it like literally every other word in the English language, and employing it in a non-literal, hyperbolic fashion.
And if you’re confused if the literally I used there was figurative or not? It doesn’t matter. You understood my point either way.
Even without sarcasm, exact isn’t exactly exact. If I tell you about something unusual that happened, and you say, “The exact same thing happened to me!”, what you mean is that something *very similar *happened to you. It can’t be the exact same thing, because for one, it didn’t happen at the same point in time and space, because if it had I’d have seen you there and you wouldn’t have to tell me about it, right?
No, it’s the other way around. The (subjectively) acceptable uses are those which have spawned other metaphors precisely because they present an emotionally provocative image closely related to the reality that they are meant to amplify. The poor uses are those employed by ignoramuses who completely fail to understand this linguistic device, and who are ignorant of what the word “literally” fundamentally even means. I am in awe of even comedic writers like P.G. Wodehouse who wrote “incorrectly” in order to express a point with impactful and memorable eloquence. It isn’t grammatical correctness in the school-marm sense that should be sought after; it’s basic literacy in the sense of understanding the language in all its nuances, and how to use it best.
Yeah. I still use “literally” to mean “in a literal sense, non-figuratively”, but I enjoy watching words linguistically evolve to have semantically opposite meanings that exist in current usage simultaneously. See also, e.g., “wicked” and “sick”.
I think part of the issue is that the whole prescriptive versus descriptive aspect gets all the attention, when the crucial but virtually ignored element is actually spoken versus written.
The different uses have very different intonation when spoken, and as has become evident by the invention of emoticons and emoji, conversational dialogue is much more nuanced than other forms of language and harder to express in writing.
This is a fairly new phenomenon caused by technology, so there’s no sense in trying to cite principles that cannot have existed because there was practically no comparable context to need them for.
See also, e.g., “wicked” and “sick”.