Are you claiming that the words “really” and “actually” no longer have any meaning?
That really appears to be the claim. And I’m really torn on this one, because it does appear to be sincere; but I’d also be gobsmacked if Ludovic is unable to distinguish between the two related meanings of “really” in this paragraph. It’d be pretty weird if he couldn’t, the equivalent of thinking I was describing that weirdness as “somewhat beautiful” when I said it was pretty.
Personally I find only a little use for the word “literally” in my communications, either written or spoken, and would in particular avoid using it to add hyperbolic emphasis. When I hear it used in that way I can’t help but hear Rob Lowe’s Chris Traeger from Parks and Rec abusing the crap out of it.
So I can be on board with a belief that usually it is used because the person expressing the thought knew that the expression they had in mind was a worn out cliche but either had insufficient skill to create a more powerful or apt metaphor or was too lazy to … so they added on the “literally” to the crappy one instead, as if that made up for the inanity of the metaphor being used.
And the intensifier usage is still a very proper one.
It is just one of many contronyms: “terms that, depending on context, can have opposite or contradictory meanings.” A fun list that one, and I wonder if those who shudder at the long-established contradictory meanings of “literally” similarly object to many of them.
Does the fact that I can dust my cake with sugar and then dust my nightstand as my next task bother them?
Is it very problematic that our custom is no custom orders?
That the sous chef’s wages were garnished because he garnished the plates with too many expensive edible flowers?
Does the objection to the opposite meanings of one word weather this argument or is it weathered by it?
Are you really dying for this sort of contradictory word usage to stop? Really?
It addresses the issue I raised. How do you teach something to somebody when they do not want to learn it?
Quantum leap for a big change is my pet peeve.
What better word to be a contronym than one based on the concept of existing as two states at the same time??
This is not a serious conversation.
I’m having a little fun but the points made are in fact serious, assuming those who object to the real world usages of “literally” are serious, and not just whooshing the rest of us.
Stylistically the rule is simple: write clearly and unless the goal is to have the two meanings both be possible interpretations, avoid circumstances in which a word’s meaning is unclear from context.
Very seriously this happens with lots of words. What is meant by “Trim the tree.”? You’d only know by context but rarely would context not make it clear. Are we talking about a small cut fir in a Christian American family room in December? Or an oak with a branch scraping your house in the Fall? One meaning is putting on and the other taking off but the context allows the same word to clearly mean either opposite thing.
“Literally” is in very good company. English is a grand thing!
So what? Of course we can still express “the real meaning of the word decimated”: we can say “reduced by one-tenth” or some synonymous expression.
Sure, you can never guarantee that you can go on using the same word in the same way forever and always have it interpreted in the same way. Linguistic meanings are born and change and sometimes go extinct. That’s why I can’t say in modern English, for example, “I went over to my brother’s for some pleasant intercourse” without startling and shocking a lot of listeners who won’t be aware that I’m using a somewhat archaic form of the word.
Nonsense. We’re not losing vocabulary, we’re just changing vocabulary. New words and meanings are constantly being added to the language, just as old words and meanings are gradually falling out of use.
:dubious: This is ludicrously melodramatic hooey. Is your ability to think clearly degraded because you don’t use “nice” in its original sense of “choosy, discriminating, precise”? Or because you sometimes say “based off of” instead of “based on”?
Nobody with a normally functioning brain loses the ability to think clearly just as a result of ordinary linguistic evolution changing the meaning of some words. If you can’t naturally adapt to that commonplace linguistic phenomenon without ending up distressed and “lost in a mental fog”, you may want to consult a professional about it.
That word is not used, as I’ve heard it, to mean “last.” It is used to mean, “beyond ultimate,” where “Ultimate” is used to mean “the most” rather than “the last.” Like, the last time I played frisbee it was not Ultimate Frisbee…or was it?
Or, you know, I had a misfire.
“Podium” really gets me though, and don’t even get me started on “alright.”
Oh, too late. Sometime in the late '60s, when I was in high school, I had a teacher–not even an English teacher–who could get really wound up because some dictionary or another had allowed in the word “alright.” She would give up on whatever lecture she’d started on if you could get her off on this tangent. She might even forget to assign homework. “It’s two words! People who write it as one word are conflating it with ‘already’ and ‘all ready’ which have two different meanings. If you use this word you are an ignoramus.”
Well alrighty then.
I have since worked at places whose stylebooks expressly forbade “alright.” But now my spell check is flagging “all right” and recommending that word of ignoramuses, or is it ignorami?
“Ignoramopodes.”
Well, that is indeed the issue, isn’t it? What do you do with people who cling to their stubborn prejudices despite the overwhelming weight of expert opinion?
People not understanding the historical meaning of “quantum” is my pet peeve. Julius Caesar never used the word to mean something at the atomic scale.
A descriptivist is someone who says that if enough people make the same error, it’s not an error anymore.
A prescriptivist is someone who writes rules but if anybody follows them it’s a coincidence.
Prescriptivism gives a measure of comfort to those who demand order but ultimately it’s a losing battle.
You are expressing a Sapir-Whorf hypothesis view: language shapes thought. No question in my mind that a language which forced a paucity of expressive means onto the population would be doubleplusungood. But language in fact reflects thought. Words that are not needed to reflect current concepts either go extinct or adapt and new words form to fill new cognitive niches. While the premise that we are losing vocabulary is untrue, if it was it would be a reflection of our becoming foggy, not a cause of it.
Prescriptivism is a social construct - it’s a way of saying, “I know what the rules are; therefore, I am smart and educated.” The fact that the rules are completely arbitrary and pointless is immaterial.
The thing is, I’m not so sure this is a bad idea. Sometimes I want to know who the smart and educated people are. Don’t you?
- Rules change.
- As defined by the dictionaries the rule is that the word can be used as a hyperbolic modifier.
- There are those who use words to attempt to signify their membership in an educated elite club. I want to know who they are in order to mock them. I admire more those who can express complex ideas in ways understood by the room they are in, whatever the level of that room. That takes skill. They are the smart and educated. The others? I think the saying goes “he is a bookcase not a scholar.”
Works for the French.
If that isn’t an SNL skit, it should be. I hardly ever LOL at something I read, and I LOL.
OK, a real-world example where “literally” is ambiguous (I think I encountered this one on this very board):
“He owns literally a thousand CDs”.
This might mean that he owns, say, 80 of them, and the speaker is just using “literally” for emphasis. Or it might mean that he’s a DJ, and really does own more than 999 CDs. Nor does it help to instead say “He owns a thousand CDs, for reals” or “he actually owns a thousand CDs”, because those have the same use as an intensifier that “literally” does.