With surely gets used more frequently than literally. If your goal is to decrease ambiguity, why wouldn’t you start with the words that will have the greatest impact?
The answer, of course, is that it’s not about ambiguity at all but rather intellectual shibboleths.
edit: Hold the phone, Ethel.
Which is it? Artful or everydayspeak?
Here’s the thing. We pedants recognize that people sometimes use hyperbole, metaphors, and figurative language. This is fine. Usually, it will be clear from context that what’s meant is hyperbolic, metaphorical, or figurative. This is also fine. Occasionally, it will be unclear what is meant. Even this is fine, because in those situations we can ask for clarification. It’s only when clarification becomes impossible (or at least, very difficult) that there’s a problem, and this is what the new usage of “literally” leads us to.
At the present time, the phrase “quite literally” fulfills that role. (And, yes, maybe one day that’ll end up an intensifier as well, such is language.) Once again, like others in this thread, I have never encountered a case where the use of “literally” is confusing, or any less confusing than words like “really” or “actually.” It’s not a problem that needs solving, nor is it particularly a “new usage,” dating back to the 17th century according to the OED, being used by authors such as John Dryden and Alexander Pope. I’m okay with that.
ETA: Actually, it’s etymonline which cites Dryden and Pope. The OED entry I have (2011) goes back to 1769.
ETA2: The Pope usage is from 1708, from a correspondence: “Every day with me is literally another yesterday for it is exactly the same.” Alexander Pope, Letter to H. Cromwell (18 Mar. 1708) I can’t find the John Dryden reference, though. At any rate, it’s not exactly a new-fangled use of the word, although it certainly seems like this usage has supplanted the non-figurative usage in daily conversation.
I’m no Pope scholar, but Pope should have (and may have) realized that every day (for EVERYONE) literally, actually, really does become a yesterday; so I’m not sure this is a good example of “figurative” usage of literally.
Keep coming with the examples, because they’re only strengthening my argument.
Maybe if he’s living his life in “Groundhog Day.”
Charles Dickens?
"There is never a candle lighted in this house, until one’s eyes are literally falling out of one’s head with being stretched to read the paper.” Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1853)
And these are the pre-1900 cites from the OED:
I’m going to scratch the Pope quote. That is using literally for emphasis, but not necessarily hyperbole. (Plus, I have seen another version of that quote that is slightly different, with “literally another to-morrow,” which I think is the correct version.)
Goddam you’re reaching.
Alcott deliberately plays with the dual meaning of the word, making a joke that only works because of the two meanings of the word. Someone was confused by the joke. You infer from that that the problem is with the intensifier meaning of the word, and that you’ve satisfied my challenge from earlier in the thread to:
And then you have the nerve to call me “dimwitted.”
Uh, no, Einstein. Your example fails on both accounts. First, Alcott WAS deliberately creating confusion, just a tiny bit of it necessary for the humor value of the passage. Second, when you read carefully, the meaning IS clear. It just takes some careful reading.
Your second example doesn’t even appear in the passage. I’ve taken the trouble to Google your example for you, but I’m finding nothing. And you expect us to take this seriously?
Example fail, dude. Example fail.
As does “this is true” or “no lie.”
But the overarching point is that these are unnecessary. Currently the best example in which there’s any confusion is a quote from a book over a hundred years old in which there IS no confusion for the careful reader, and in which the author was deliberately creating whatever confusion is there for the sake of a mild play on idiom.
All good examples. I said way upthread that for art’s sake, i.e, through the use of poetic license, I am not going to tell Mark Twain et al how they should use the language. An episode of Joyce’s Ulysses employs no punctuation; nonetheless most would agree that writing without punctuation tends to be unclear.
My point from the beginning of this discussion has been that allowing literally to be defined and used in the “hyping” manner CAN weaken the word’s usual meaning and CAN sometimes confuse the audience about the author/speaker’s intent. I have only capitalized CAN because I’m not trying to say that it ALWAYS confuses the reader.
Real world examples were asked for and delivered. Keep grasping! I think it’s interesting how you believe citing old works to support your point to use a word a certain way is valid, but my citing how those very quotes could be misunderstood is not valid–because the works are so old!
Obviously I failed because I did not realize the superiority of the person with whom I’m arguing, i.e., someone who knows Louisa May Alcott’s state of mind with such amazing accuracy. I bow to you. (BTW, this is sarcasm.)
You have an interesting definition of delivery.
I don’t disagree that there might be some usage somewhere that is truly ambiguous. So what? I also wouldn’t disagree that “literally” used in its figurative sense should not be used in formal writing (except maybe for talking about “literally” itself.) That much I could agree with. But in conversation or writing that is effecting an informal tone? Why not? That’s how the word is being used today. Do you sit around and gripe that Mick Jagger actually could get satisfaction when he’s singing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” rather than using a double negative construction either for emphasis or “negative agreement”? Do you bemoan the fact that “decimate” has moved from its original meaning of one-tenth destruction to total annihilation? I can’t bring myself to even use the word “presently,” because I grew up with it meaning “in a short while,” but I recognize and accept that it now means “currently” in most contexts, and most people would not know what the hell I mean if I used it in its original sense. And what shall we do with “peruse”? Do I insist on its original meaning of careful examination, or do I go with what most people mean by it, which is a quick skim over something? (And that’s one the dictionaries haven’t caught up on, for the most part.)
I suppose there is some utility to having self-appointed language guardians that make us aware of the change of language, and have us at least look at and consider how meaning is changing. But language is living, breathing, evolving. (Well, not literally for the first two, of course.) It will change, regardless. I think the ship has long sailed for “literally,” and I don’t find any utility in insisting upon restricting its use, anymore than I would insist “really” to mean “in actual fact.” As a lover of the English language (and languages in general), I believe part of my job is to use words carefully, but also to reflect language in the way that it is actually used, and to know in which contexts to use them. Like I said, I wouldn’t use it formally, but in conversation, sure, because that’s how people talk, at least around me.
For the time being, I’ll support the push against “penultimate,” “non-plussed,” and “disinterested” being used outside their original meanings (though I think I’ve lost the fight against “disinterested”), but if new meanings supplant the old ones, so what? Such is the evolution of language. I’m not going to raise my blood pressure worrying about how words have changed. I’ll recognize the change and reflect it in my own usage, or just avoid the word altogether if my brain can’t quite wrap itself around it (like with “presently.”) Little I can say or do will change the democratic evolution of language. English will continue to survive, meanings will continue to drift, and we will find different and new ways of expressing ourselves. I’m okay with that.
If you think that’s a fatalistic or resigned attitude towards English, that’s your prerogative. I view lexical or semantic drift interesting and part of the evolution of language (not devolution.)
(^ And apologies for a few errant commas in there. Damned things are making me twitch on re-read. Why do I never proofread before submitting? 
)
Well, you should. I have a superpower granted to me by my superscience technology. I call it temporospatial telepathy. It allows me to read minds across time and space.
But I’m a generous mad scientist, so I’ll share this technology with you.
Here’s how it works:
One user of the technology has a thought and grants me permission to read her mind (in this case, Ms. Alcott). In order to use the technology, she applies a pointed object–a “pen”–first to a container of dark liquid–“ink”–and then to flattened wood pulp–“paper.” She drags the “pen” across the “paper” in very specific patterns, leaving behind traces of these patterns in ink. These are called “letters.” THEY RECORD HER THOUGHTS!
I have studied this same super-science, so I can function as the temporospatial telepathy receiver. In order to do so, I look at the patterns she created (or at a facsimile of them), and because I’ve studied them, I’m able to understand the thoughts that she recorded in the “letters.” I HAVE READ HER MIND!
It is a powerful technology. It is this technology that allows me to, as you put it, “know Louisa May Alcott’s state of mind with such amazing accuracy.” I encourage you to learn this same super-science, and you, too, can have a superpower like me!
Criminy. I had no idea we had to go back to such basics.
OHHHHH! I’m so glad you told me that. I literally had no way of knowing what you meant without this highly informative disclaimer.
It’s not a lost cause at all; I believe you and I are in agreement on not using the “figurative” meaning of the word in formal writing, and on the fact that someone may possibly not be sure which definition a writer/speaker may have intended. I’m comforted to know that we can now call on “Left Hand of Dorkness” to set us straight if such an unlikely event should should somehow occur.
IMHO, it is a lost cause, and not a cause worth defending, because I am all for the figurative use of “literally.” It’s never bothered me. I like it just fine as an intensifier. I wouldn’t use it in formal writing because it generally is an informal/conversational word when used in that sense. There are lot of perfectly good words and constructions that I wouldn’t use in formal writing for this reason. Formal speaking and writing is pretty much its own dialect, as I see it, and subject to its own set of sometimes arbitrary “rules.” The characterization of it as an intellectual shibboleth as made earlier in this thread is an apt one.
When I say it might be ambiguous in some cases, I’m allowing for the fact that someone somewhere may have used it ambiguously, so you can’t just come back and say “ah ha! gotcha!” It doesn’t change my view on “literally,” as the vast majority of the time, it is clear from context how it is being used.
You’re welcome to call on me if you can’t figure out what someone meant in a real-life use of “literally.” pulykamell is as well, although I have every confidence that he won’t need to.
I would argue it never had a literalistic meaning that precluded its use as an intensifier.
I don’t believe anybody has produced evidence that its connotation has changed, especially not in anybody’s lifetime. All the examples provided of ambiguous uses are quite contrived. If a literal meaning were absolutely necessarily, the structure of the sentence could be modified easily to accomplish this.
I’d image the use of “literally” as an intensifier may have become more popular as an ironic response to the pendants who insistently insist it is incorrectly used as such!