According to the dictionary, “literally” now also means “figuratively”
Merriam-Webster, Macmillan Dictionary, Google, and The Cambridge Dictionary say so.
I find this quote cromulent:
:headdesk: :headdesk: :headdesk:
Didn’t we have one of these threads like 2 weeks ago? I truly don’t understand why it’s so hard to let people talk the way they want to talk.
I assume ‘literally’ was used as an exaggeration so often it became equivalent to ‘virtually’ or ‘figuratively’. I can live with it. But it’s now pointless, to now say something is ‘literally so’ leaves the listener unclear on the meaning.
Sure, literally often means figuratively. I personally wouldn’t want to use it that way, though. Just because a word is in the dictionary doesn’t mean you won’t be judged for using it.
It doesn’t literally mean “figuratively”, you can’t put “figuratively” in its place and achieve the same meaning. Literally may be used figuratively as an intensifier.
Because it interferes with accurate communication.
Or: Camouflage paint rains heavily. The last sentence you saw is often one floor above you.
We have a winner! This is one of my pet peeves, but we’ve gone around this a zillion times, and I just don’t have the energy to go in depth again. I have literally never found a use of “literally” in the wild where the meaning was unclear. It literally makes my head explode when people argue that it’s confusing.
My thinkations scrumptiously.
So when do we start the campaign to make “figuratively” mean “literally”?
For some people, it’s not an issue. All words for them have a vague meaning that’s sorta … like … you know … and they can’t express a subtle thought with precision. Sadly, they are dragging the language down to their level.
Figuratively fuck those guys.
If using literally as a general intensifier were impeding communication people would stop using it or adjust how they used it. Since people are continuing to use literally as a general intensifier, we must conclude that the problem, if one exists, does not lie with them.
If you’d like, you can write a nasty letter to the lexicographers who added the meaning of literally as a general intensifier to the OED, though I can’t imagine they’d care as they’ve all since died given that the meaning was added in 1903.
I think we discuss this quarterly. I will add my usual comment:
If literally now means figuratively, we’re gonna need a new word that means literally.
mmm
I’ve thought for years that arguably and inarguably are totally unnecessary words, it’s time to add literally to that list.
The dictionary is wrong.
I assume that when you say “quarterly”, you don’t mean it literally, but actually mean “once in a while”. Or maybe you mean four times a year. Who the hell knows what you mean! According to some, the English language is such a paragon of clarity that we hardly need words at all! We may as well abandon words like “literally” as having any defined meaning and just throw them overboard into the roiling cesspool of illiteracy.
Flammable vs. Inflammable.
Which catches fire first?
That’s the way I keep hearing it used incorrectly. But even then, it’s almost always in the context of something that’s substantially whatever it is that’s being described.
So I might hear someone say something like “Literally everyone in our section ducked, when that foul ball went screaming into the stands near third base.” They don’t mean that every single person ducked, which is what the first definition means, but that a very substantial proportion of the people in the section ducked.
It’s a way of figuratively intensifying the sentence by using an absolute, rather than using phrasing with less intensity, like “Most people ducked” It’s more accurate, but in the context of talking about an event in a baseball game, it’s less evocative.
It’s basically a sort of verbal embellishment, or at least that’s how i see it.
Here is a four page effort I started several years ago.
That how about “Everyone in our section ducked, when that foul ball went screaming into the stands near third base”. You know, since not everyone ducked. “Literally” is telling us that the next word is not true??!