. . . is *ironic."
Who rained on your wedding day?
Literally?
When I sing Alanis Morrisette’s Ironic on Karaoke Night, I always sing it ironically.
Also, terribly.
Yeah, that’s ironic.
Is not being allowed to use the word ironic ironically, ironic?
The word “ironically” is very frequently used incorrectly to mean something like “by a related coincidence” where the circumstance is in no way ironic at all. For instance, “he was a Marxist who opposed the principle of individual property rights; ironically, he was arrested last night for shoplifting”.
That’s not “ironic”, you twits, it’s a natural cause-and-effect consequence.
It’s ironic that the word “ironically” is often used non-ironically.
No, that’s “Ferrous,” as in Bueller. 
Lol tnank thats exactly the cause i stated for the effect of not being allowed to use “ironically” ironically.
Eh, you can do it. You just need to put an ironic, mocking tone on it.
I mean, I so ironically said that, didn’t I?
I. Ron Hubbard is dead.
The only word you’re not allowed to use ironically
That is ironic, and I believe I used the phrase ironically.
And the only word you are ONLY allowed to use literally is “literally.”
Ironically, that is not true.
So i keep checkinh back to see if you’ve expanded on your simple contradiction . . . .
Not to speak for wolfpup, but there’s two ways your statement is not true. The pedantic level is over the use of the word “allowed.” There is, of course, nobody to prevent someone from using a word however they want. This isn’t French, there’s no authority governing what is and is not acceptable speech. You’re allowed to use it that way because there’s nobody with the authority to disallow it.
The more substantial disagreement is over the idea that there’s something fundamentally incorrect with using “literally” to mean “figuratively.” While it’s a popular complaint, the dominant view among linguists is that there’s nothing necessarily incorrect about using “literally” as a non-literal intensifier.
I’d argue the biggest one is just that, even if linguists did say it was bad, it hasn’t stopped anyone. And that’s usually what “not allowed” means: that people don’t say it.
So . . . It’s your two assumptions that “not allowed” can also only be taken in a strictly literal way, and that this is actually not illegal is a valid argument? That’s like the most egregious example of a semantic straw man that I have possibly encountered. Ever.
How did you convince yourselves that I was talking in the strictest legalese, rather than the obvious fact that I meant that if you used “literally” incorrectly you offer yourself up to an entire Internet of opprobrium? (Can we take the inevitable hijack of debating the strictest definition of the word “entire” as a given?)
Your arguments are only valid if you actually completely misconstrued my post in every conceivable way, when in the context of this thread that it’s a million percent* obvious that I was speaking figuratively and hyperbolically.
So to clarify the point that I was intending to make during a legitimate further discussion, the current intolerance** of using the word “literally” incorrectly clearly started with its occasional use in a hyperbolic manner.
E.g. “My jaw hit the floor” is clearly figurative, and elicits an image of someone with their mouth wide open in shock. If, after a beat, you add the word “literally,” you’re obviously using the word hyperbolically, analogous to a punchline, to convey the ridiculous image of an actual jaw actually dropping to the actual floor. This jokey usage of the word confused people who didn’t “get” that the word was being used figuratively–i.e. ironically–and so they raised the pedantic objection that “literally” was not being used in it’s literal sense. Thus the implication that it was incorrect to ever use it figuratively.***
*To protect myself from further disingenuous semantic hijacks, allow me to explicitly state that this is intended as hyperbole.
**Figurative
“”*You know exactly what I mean
[Apologies for my tone of frustration; disingenuous straw men are a particular bugbear of mine.]