And, once again, there’s another one. Things can be comparatively unique. Something, for example, can be unique in multiple ways, hence, “more unique” than something else. But, yes, often it’s just used as a synonym for “rare” or “unusual.”
I wish folks would lay this topic to rest; gives me a headache and I need to lie down.
** carefully hides drill behind my back **
Can you give the example? (I’m not doubting you–I’m actually trying to collect examples. It’s so hard to come across any.)
This literally digression is literally so boring it is literally making me homicidal. And I’m not sure what sense of the word I am using!
ETA, did not mean to reply to you specifically @pulykamell
Fortunately, the digression is not literally unique, here.
I have actually not ever heard literally used as an intensifier. I don’t usually call people on their grammar in real life. I work in a convenience store. I’d be correcting all day and end up in the stocks (if we had them) after a few hours. I would call someone out for that one. Incidentally, my Son in Law, uses “brung” ~shudder~ I do not correct him. He’s adult family and lives in my house. I do correct my 11 year old granddaughter (his daughter) when she uses it. It’s a work in progress.
I can’t remember the details, because it was a long time ago, but I was being given instructions on how to do something at my job, and I was told that you “literally” have to only do it this specific way. (It was a retail job almost 30 years ago.) I assumed that they actually meant that you literally have to only do it a particular way. They later clarified that they meant it was usually the best way to do it, but because of their language I was under the impression that I couldn’t in any way deviate.
That’s the one that sticks in my head the most, because it caused a massive headache for me as a new employee there. The funny thing is that I can’t remember the details of what was actually said or what the process was (it had something to do with how to prepare a pallet of damaged goods for return on a truck) but the misuse of “literally” in that situation is what stuck with me, both because of how absurd the situation was and how pissed I was about the conversation and in particular that word.
Are they using the word incorrectly, or are you under the mistaken impression that it’s not a word?
My 9- and 7-year-old daughters both use “brang” as the simple past for “bring.” I do let them know that “brought” is the “official” past tense, and when speaking with teachers and the like, they should use that, and that “brang” is colloquial. I use different words than that, but that’s what I try to convey. I don’t particularly care they use “brang” as long as they know “brought” is considered standard in prestige dialect English.
a
: to convey, lead, carry, or cause to come along with one toward the place from which the action is being regarded
brought a bottle of wine to the party
b
: to cause to be, act, or move in a special way: such as
(1)
: ATTRACT
her screams brought the neighbors
(2)
try to bring them to his way of thinking
(3)
was brought before a judge
(4)
: to cause to come into a particular state or condition
bring water to a boil
Could you explain? Every example uses the correct (to me) version of bring.
My gd would say: “I brung my homework home.” and I would tell her: “It’s, I brought my homework home.”
As it says, it is the:
chiefly dialectal past tense and past participle of BRING
I’m guessing you didn’t read to the very end of the page, where it gave three examples of journalists using the term. I’ll repeat them for you.
Our challenge will be to let people know who brung it to them.
—ABC News, 21 Jan. 2024Born in the commercial capital of Colombo, Dassanayake left at age 16 to study in London, but trips home — and his mother’s cooking — kept him well rooted in the beautifully spiced dishes that brung him.
—Amy Drew Thompson, Orlando Sentinel, 19 Jan. 2023The labor leader, hunting in Scotland, must come to identify with his former adversaries and will sell out the folks who brung him.
—David Mamet, National Review, 31 Mar. 2022
It seems largely interchangeable with “brought”.
Yes, but perhaps a cultural thing? It brings to mind the phrase; “Dance with the ones that brung ya” and oddly google and this message board correct that. Interesting, I had never heard that usage except for that particular phrase I quoted above.
I’ll note too that Merriam-Webster has an article discussing the terms “brought”, “brang”, and “brung”.
It does say that “brang” and “brung” are nonstandard English, and strongly recommends the word “brought” instead, because it has a stronger presence in English and a better pedigree. The other terms are less common. Though in particular, “brung” is dialectical, in the sense that in some regional variations of English it is fairly common. Not so much with “brang”, which is labeled as “substandard”; while it’s considered to be a recognized word in English, it’s not really common anywhere.
This does reinforce what @pulykamell was saying before about how language is imprecise by nature and any kind of language that finds common usage by definition can’t be “wrong”.
He punched him so hard, he literally knocked him into orbit.
He punched him so hard, he fucking knocked him into orbit.
I ask you, which of these intensifiers works in any sentence requiring one, with zero danger of creating confusion? Precise, pithy and elegant. A word for the ages. I rest my case.
There’s zero danger of confusion in either. Both are intensifiers in those cases. Unless the first takes place on a spaceship or some kind of situation where it is literally possible to knock someone into orbit. In that case, “literally” is meant literally, and pretty amusing.
And coincidentally that perfect English is whatever was spoken when they were growing up.
Literally as an intensifier literally (in the old sense of the word) is not the ‘exact opposite’.
Literally (in the new sense of the word) two brain cells should be sufficient to determine that the opposite of an intensifier is a word that does the opposite of intensify, and literally literally (old sense again) does not do that.
Ah, but you missed where I said “any sentence.” Think big, my friend.
–wonders why the thread blew up, reads a 70+ post digression on literally literally–
Forget it 'Lines. it’s Dopertown.
I wonder if @Sylvanz likes to “well acktshually” people who use ‘decimate’ when more than 10% of something was destroyed.