Anyway, here’s a thread for the literally discussion, and even there I say “we’ve gone over this a zillion times.” Should be up there with “Rio” or something.
Superficially it might seem similar, and those latter words have certainly experienced a drift in meaning. The difference AFAIK is that “literally” is the only such word that has evolved a meaning that is the direct diametric opposite of its original meaning, and the two currently coexist, creating one of the strangest aberrations of language I’ve ever seen. Whereas those other words generally retain a connection to their original meaning. For example, “actually” in its plainest literal sense means the truth or factual reality of a situation. It’s a natural evolution to then be used to emphasize something that is surprising or unexpected (“he actually thought I would accept his offer”).
John McWhorter has tried to make the case that this “literally” aberration isn’t strange at all, and cites what he considers to be similar examples of contronyms. But all his illustrations are bunk, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve talked about this before. I could repost my original observations but this probably isn’t the place for it. One point that I found particularly interesting was McWhorter’s assertion that the use of “literally” as an intensifier has never ever resulted in ambiguity, and then citing an example that I found so ambiguous that it demonstrated the exact opposite.
I’d be curious about this, in the other thread. I’m sure such a construction must exist, but it is exceedingly rare enough that I have not come across it. It would need to be a case such that what follows “literally” is plausible enough to be possible. Typically, the statement is either obviously hyperbolic (when being used as an intensifier) or obviously literal (when being used to describe something unusual, but clearly not hyperbolic, or when riffing on an idiom.)
I dunno, it may be used that way, but the way I usually see it correctly used is, “Disagreeing on the reality that we should be agreeing on.”
And yes, that does mean that they are disagreeing, but it it what and why they are disagreeing on that defines it.
I understand its definition to be to be lying with the intent to cause the person you are lying to to doubt their own perceptions.
I don’t know that the use of the term has been overused so much as overuse of the actual action of gaslighting, in recent times.
I think that that is also on the increase because the textbook on PTSD has expanded. It recognizes that people can experience trauma that affects them for their entire life that doesn’t involve being shot at by enemy forces in a war.
The “overuse” is less on the side of people who have experiences that cause them pain to relive, and more on the side of people who delight in “triggering” people. A relative of a well known politician recently released a book entitled, “Triggered”, and he was not talking about his own pain and experience with trauma.
I love this sentence.
When people ask if I am doing good, I reply, “I rarely do good, but I’m often doing well.”
Yeah, these days, I hear “trigger” and its forms mostly as a pejorative, as in “aw…are you triggered, you poor little snowflake”? Or some shit like that to imply someone is an emotional weakling/prone to outbursts The irony is, though, at least in my observation of the Interwebz, that people most likely to use “trigger” in this sense are generally the ones “triggered” by a post (often quite tangentially) into an over-the-top emotional, completely inappropriate response.
Below is a link to the post where I talk about it. Briefly, it’s a quotation from David Hume writing a history of England in 1806: “He had the singular fate of dying literally of hunger” (about halfway down my post). IIRC, some poster(s) there disagreed with me, but it seemed to me, especially in the context in which McWhorter cites this, that it could be perceived either literally (actual starvation) or metaphorically (that the writer lived and died in great poverty).
As a matter of fact, the context in which McWhorter provides the quote seems to make it clear that he himself believes it to be figurative. He goes on to add that “the purely figurative usage is hardly novel, either: the sentence I literally coined money was written by Fanny Kemble in 1863. Kemble, a British stage actress, hardly considered herself a slangy sort of person.” Yet if you look at the full context of the Hume quote, it’s clear that it was meant literally.
One that I’ve noticed lately is the over-use and watering down of “creepy.” Up until a few years ago, it had a rather limited usage. It was limited to events that at least 95% of people would agree would be (A) inappropriate and (B) practically everybody who found themselves on the receiving end of such a situation would feel intensely uncomfortable.
These days, it’s commonly used to mean “I personally am offended and outraged by this.”
Yes, in the Hume quote, that sounds clearly literal.
I agree. But here is an exact extract from the portion of the book in which McWhorter provides the quote (Words on the Move). It seems abundantly clear that the entire gist of this discussion is the figurative sense of “literally”, making the case about how old and established it is. Yet McWhorter seems to have gotten confused by the ambiguity himself, seeming to think the Hume quote to be another example of an old figurative usage. Unless you somehow can make a different interpretation of this:
Literally had gone past meaning “by the letter” in any sense as early as the eighteenth century, when, for example, Francis Brooke wrote The History of Emily Montague (1769), which contains this sentence: “He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.” One cannot feed among anything “by the letter.” Or, in 1806, when the philosopher David Hume wrote, “He had the singular fate of dying literally of hunger,” in his signature history of England, despite the fact that there are no letters via which to starve. Yet this was an authoritative and highly popular volume, more widely read at the time than Hume’s philosophical treatises, equivalent to modern histories by Simon Schama and Peter Ackroyd. The purely figurative usage is hardly novel, either: the sentence I literally coined money was written by Fanny Kemble in 1863. Kemble, a British stage actress, hardly considered herself a slangy sort of person.
Expand that to short phrases, and you have could care less/couldn’t care less.
No, he didn’t - he died of starvation or lack of food. Hunger literally never killed anyone.
is problematic in that “coined” properly means created, invented or stamped out. However, it is acceptable usage to describe a situation in which money is easily come by.
The DSM-IV recognized this, so it’s hardly new, but I’m personally on the fence. There’s having an unpleasant experience and then there’s being abused, beaten, raped, trapped in an earthquake, or otherwise subjected to violence. I feel like the broadening colloquial definition of trauma miminizes the life-debilitating issues that can arise from those experiences. However there are some experiences that AFAIK aren’t included but should be, like childhood emotional abuse and severe, protracted bullying.
In general, though, I feel like people these days just have to dramatize everything. The internet has created a culture where you have to constantly vye for attention in a market saturated with grandiose claims. It’s not bad enough that your ex was an asshole, he must be pathologized as a narcissist. He didn’t disagree with your perspective, he gaslighted you. Your head literally exploded. I’m so exhausted by the extremism of it all. I literally can’t even. 
As for the mocking tone of “triggered” I feel that also trivializes what is experienced by victims of trauma. And I hate it. I feel like my disorder is the butt of a joke. And the intent is to hurt. But they wouldn’t have latched onto that word if people hadn’t been using it in earnest to describe every offense.
Stolen from Michael O’Donoghue’s “How to Write Good” in the early National Lampoon.
A long time ago, when I was just starting out, I had the good fortune to meet the great Willa Cather. With all the audacity of youth, I asked her what advice she would give the would-be-writer and she replied:
"My advice to the would-be-writer is that he start slowly, writing short undemanding things, things such as telegrams, flip-books, crank letters, signature scarves, spot quizzes, capsule summaries, fortune cookies and errata. Then, when he feels he’s ready, move up to the more challenging items such as mandates, objective correlatives, passion plays, pointless diatribes, minor classics, manifestos, mezzotints, oxymora, exposes, broadsides, and papal bulls. …
I could share more of the piece with you, but suddenly I am run over by a truck.
For further excellent guidance on how to write good, I recommend Dave Barry’s series of columns Ask Mr. Language Person. They touch on important and useful points of grammar like these:
Welcome to another episode of ‘‘Ask Mister Language Person,’’ the column written by the language expert who recently won the World Wrestling Federation Grammar Smackdown when he kneed William Safire right in the gerunds.
Our first language question comes from an extremely high federal official, who asks:
Q. What are the mandatorical parts of speech that is required to be in a sentence?
A. To be grammatorically correct, a sentence must have three basic elements: (1) A SUBJECT, which is a noun that can be either a person, place or mineral; (2) A VERB, which is a word that describes an action, such as ‘‘kung fu’’; and (3) AN OBJECT, which is a noun that weighs two or more pounds. Let’s see how these elements combine to form this example sentence, written by Marcel Proust:
“Being late at night, Earl failed to check his undershorts for lipstick stains, which is why he was awokened at 6:30 a.m. by Lurleen whanging him upside his head with a object.”
Q. I am a top business executive writing an important memo, and I wish to know if the following wording is correct: "As far as sales, you’re figures do not jive with our parameters.‘’
A. You have made the common grammatical error of using the fricative infundibular tense following a third-person corpuscular imprecation. The correct wording is: "As far as sales, your fired.‘’
Q. Like millions of Americans, I cannot grasp the extremely subtle difference between the words ‘‘your’’ and "you’re.‘’
A. Top grammar scientists are often confused by these two words, which are technically known as ‘‘bivalves,’’ or words that appear to be identical and have hinged shells. The best way to tell them apart is to remember that ‘‘you’re’’ is a contraction, which is a type of word used during childbirth, as in: ‘‘Hang on, Marlene, here comes you’re baby!’’ Whereas ‘‘your’’ is, grammatically, a prosthetic infarction, which means a word that is used to score a debating point in an Internet chat room, as in: "Your a looser, you morron!‘’
That’s great.
I don’t know if it fits with what the OP is referring to, but often in legal briefs or court opinions, the word “clearly” is used (overused) when the author is unable to support his or her argument with solid cites and wishes to overstate the conclusion.
There are times when the word is appropriate. If one attorney says that an officer may not pull you over for a broken tail light, I can cite a string of cases and conclude that the attorney is thus, “clearly” incorrect. However, typically it is used by one straining to make his or her cases or opinions fit the not so clear conclusion that one is trying to reach.
Using “literally” to mean “actually” is already a debasement of the word - it means “regarding words or letters,” as in “‘De nada’ literally means ‘It’s nothing’, but it’s equivalent to ‘You’re welcome’,” or “That phrase can’t be translated literally” or “The Philoctetes of Sophocles: Literally Translated Into English” (meaning, translated “word for word”). People started using “literally” metaphorically as in “He was literally standing right next to me” (what does standing have to do with words or letters?) and now regard that kind of misuse as the traditional meaning - but it’s not.
Another example for the OP: in his 1675 royal warrant approving Sir Christopher Wren’s design for St. Paul’s Cathedral, King Charles II called it “very artificial, proper, and useful”; artificial here meaning “made with artifice, well-crafted”.