But that’s precisely the situation where “literally” is most necessary. If I were complaining about a list having 70 elements, I could just say it had 70 elements, and I wouldn’t need to say “literally”, because it’d be obvious that I wasn’t being hyperbolic.
And yes, there are other words that can be used in place of “literally”, but they don’t help, because all of them are subject to the same use as a non-literal intensifier that “literally” is.
“The list has over 8,000 elements.” If you want emphasis, “The list has over 8,000 elements, which is (ridiculous/unusable/”.
I agree with the others that this is totally inverting the proper meaning of the phrase – a very clear solecism.
I’m sort of gratified to see some of the usual defenders of descriptivism agree with that. But wait … what about “I could care less”? What about “my head literally asploded”? Isn’t that also “totally inverting” the original proper meaning, or, dare I say, the original literal meaning?
Can one not imagine a scenario where repeated incorrect use of “let alone” eventually either robs it of any real meaning, or even acquires a contradictory meaning to its original one through endless repetition of the pattern? Would it not then be reasonable to say, as we do for “I could care less”, don’t try to apply logic to the evolution of English, and don’t try to direct it prescriptively, but just accept it for what it is, since we all (allegedly) understand the current meaning?
Honestly, I don’t think this obviously incorrect usage is different in kind from these other examples that are now well accepted. Its only real crime is that it hasn’t (yet) caught on widely.
Not that I think we should accept it. I think it just bolsters my argument for, like, yunno, fighting stupid language abuses and excusing them as, like, just colloquialisms, yanno what I’m saying’? Because I literally could care less.
Is this really a trend? You’ve given a couple of examples, but it doesn’t seem like enough to qualify as a trend. I certainly haven’t noticed.
That said, maybe I don’t notice because it’s not confusing in the slightest. The object of “let alone” is (by definition) the more obvious and dramatic of the two cases being compared. So obvious that my brain reverses the sense of the comparison without me even thinking about it.
If I don’t need to stop reading to parse a usage, then it’s something I don’t really need to care about IMO. I doubt anyone’s getting confused by this.
Sounds like that’s laying the groundwork for exactly the kind of descriptivist apologia we’ll be hearing if and when this deplorable usage becomes more widespread.
P.S.- I’m fully on board with descriptivism. I just draw the bounds somewhat more conservatively than some others. As we can see here, the difference between “correct” or “incorrect” usage – or if you prefer, standard vs non-standard English – is a constantly shifting gray area that is highly subjective.
Stop telling people what to do, let alone doing it online.
This one doesn’t really bother me, because it conserves meaning. We still have the phrase, it still means the same thing, we’re just tweaking the word order a bit in a way that isn’t going to confuse anybody.
Contrast with a different thing that really does bother me - “salty” in the metaphorical sense used to mean sailor-like, most often in vulgarity of language, but perhaps in seagoing experience and knowledge. Now it means resentful, jealous, frustrated, or any other shading of mad, sad, or bad. So we’re giving up a rich, colorful metaphor in favor of one that also annihilates a number of other nuances of feeling. There’s no fighting it, of course, but I think it’s justifiable to feel salty about that one.
So, not literally 8000 entries then.
How about “8,042, to be precise.”
They don’t have the same problem, though, because the contexts where those words are ambiguous are different than the ones where “literally” is ambiguous. And, in fact, many are less often ambiguous, like “genuinely” or “actually.” Heck, words like “specifically” and “exactly” are not ambiguous at all.
I consider this lament over the word “literally” to be overwrought. It’s not like this is a new linguistic shift–the use of “literally” in a hyperbolic sense dates back to the 1700s. Literally has always had both meanings in the lifetime of everyone currently alive, yet you’d never know that by the constant complaints.
There is literally a difference between the misuse of let alone and phrases like I could care less.
The latter is a segment of casual language, usually spoken but sometimes in casual online use. The meaning is absolutely clear and has been since it first came into popular use. Moreover, it can have shades of meaning, for emphasis, for sarcasm, for flippancy, for dismissal.
Use of let alone, though, is almost completely confined to formal or “proper” writing. We won’t see it very often in Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, or texting. The reason for careful writing in formal language is exactly to limit confusion, to keep readers from mentally stumbling when running a sentence through their brains. Improper use of let alone creates exactly those stumbles.
When descriptivists complain, it’s not about drawing the line in the wrong place, but that they’re ignoring the whole complex topography of language with many lines, planes, curves, and dimensions.
FWIW (admittedly not all that much), I’m pretty sure I have a (commercially-released) recording around here someplace of George Carlin using “salty” in the sense of “resentful, irritated, irked” sometime in the 1970s (or perhaps early 1980s). I recall having had to work out the meaning from context, as I hadn’t heard that usage previously. But my memory being what it is, take that with appropriate skepticism. Maybe someone with better recall and/or more ambition for research knows of it too?
Anyway, my point is simply that that sense of “salty” has been around for at least several decades.
Is “salty” meaning “upset” even related to the meaning of “like a sailor”? It seems to me that it could instead be related to tears, or to “spicy” flavor.
I always assumed so, because that is the only other context in which I’ve heard it used as an adjective for a person. Tears can be salty, food can taste salty, but in reference to people, I’ve only heard it used to describe a “salty dog”; an experienced sailor.
Note too, that salty doesn’t mean “sad” or any other emotion that causes tears. It means angry and/or bitter, a stereotype often applied to crusty old sailors.
I don’t think “salty” maps to “upset” one to one. Words usually don’t catch on unless they have a specific connotation not already conveyed by another word. When I’ve heard people describe someone as “salty,” generally this means the individual is verbal with their upset — they’re not just quietly stewing, they’re telling you about it — and the person describing them as such is implying that they’re making a bigger deal out of the situation than it deserves. It’s not just a neutral descriptor, there’s a bit of judgmental dismissiveness involved. You name me another pre-existing word that conveys all that, I’ll grant that the adoption of “salty” is unnecessary.
This is actually a good example of a word being rescued from disuse. Contrary to the initial claim, I’m pretty sure salty never meant “good at seafaring,” and “vulgar like a sailor” doesn’t mean much anymore, considering how common (heh) vulgar speech is today. If it hadn’t picked up the additional meaning of, roughly, “upset,” it’d would have fallen out of use entirely by now.
Alas, I have been reduced to things like this:
“There were thousands of menu picks. AND I DO NOT MEAN THAT FIGURATIVELY.”
“Salty”? That is also a colloquialism for ship on the Great Lakes which is also used for oceanic trade.
“Jump salty” makes me wonder what there is any chance of an association with the French word “sauter” or Spanish “saltar”, “to jump”. Probably a coincidence, but I don’t know.
Meriam Webster has a whole break down on “salty,” including “jump salty,” which apparently has no connection to French or Spanish, and is just a reference to sailors being fighty.
No one ever went broke overestimating the intelligence of the American people, let alone underestimating it.