It depends. The “I hate you, you cheated, you all suck, and I’m taking my ball and going home” sore loser is not demonstrating “sour grapes” behavior. The “It doesn’t matter that you won because it’s a stupid game anyway” sore loser is.
Interestingly*, the common dismissive usage of “Whatever” has a “sour grapes” connotation, in that it implies “It doesn’t matter what you’re talking about or whether you’re right and I’m wrong because the topic is fundamentally worthless and you’re stupid for even caring about it”.
As for “no love lost between them”, it means that there was no love to lose in the first place - i.e., they hate each other and have for a long time.
This always confuses the hell out of me. I can sympathize with people who insist that as long as you understand what people are trying to say we shouldn’t complain that they’re using words completely wrong, but with penultimate I can never tell if people are using it correctly or not. I mean, why would anybody use the word penultimate if they don’t know what it means? There’s so many good words that actually means what they think penultimate means.
Oh God, yes. Also, “weary” for “wary” and “where” for “were” drive me straight up the wall. They are a dead giveaway that the person not only does not read, but does not understand basic phonics.
I’ll up the ante with a letter I once saw that my boss was writing to a person he’d interviewed for a job: “Myself and Bob enjoyed meeting you . . .” Man, that guy was a pompous twit.
Figuratively isn’t an intensifier. In fact, by pointing out that it is only figurative, it, IMHO, deflates the figure of speech. Who would say “I figuratively ate a boatload of cheese?” What person would honestly and in all seriousness reply to “I literally ate a boatload of cheese,” with, “How large of a boat was it? Did you have a yacht worth of cheese or was it just a canoe’s worth?” I am sure plenty of people would reply that way as a joke. But then, that joke itself is based on the assumption that one would have to be very dense to not understand that a figure of speech was just used.
For that matter, why do we use the verb “dust” to mean “remove a fine powdery substance from a surface” AND “cover a surface with a fine powdery substance?” Or “cleave” to mean “cut something in two” AND “stick to, adhere to.” Plenty of words have seemingly contradictory meanings. In these cases, as well as with “literally,” context is generally enough to tell you what is really meant. The same context that clues you into any idiom, hyperbole, etc is at work here.
Taken from the American Heritage Dictionary (sorry, the OED is at school, but I know for a fact that it agrees with the intensifier definition as well):
So, basically, “literally” has been used as a general intensifier for quite a while. Prescriptivists have clucked and clacked, waggled and whined, and after all these years, it’s still as common as ever. It may be a ridiculous usage, but isn’t any less ridiculous to get bent out of shape over it. Anyways irks me a little, but I’m not going to argue with anybody over it. If people want to say “anyways,” they’re more than welcome.
That being said, I already conceded that this is ridiculous. I agree that it is ridiculous. Lots of things about languages are ridiculous. But it’s still a common and acceptable use of the word.
“Sour grapes” comes from one of Aesop’s fables, the fox and the green grapes. Out of memory:
The fox doesn’t want to accept that it’s her shortcomings that caused her to not eat the grapes, that she’s been beaten by a bunch of grapes by the simple method of growing up a good distance from the floor. Oh, no, she was never interested in the grapes in the first place.
Quantum means “amount.” It does not mean “tiny amount.” In can mean “the smallest possible, undivisible, unit” in a quantum physics/quantum chemistry setting, but not in general (and even in QPh/QCh it doesn’t always mean that). The word “quantum” meant “amount” for several thousand years before QPh got invented.
sedoa, I’m going to keep right on clucking and waggling about that one anyway. Also, I see I’d be in over my head to argue with you (figuratively, that is). Anyway, welcome to the boards! I think you’ll fit right in.
Exactly. Even though I tend to avoid it in my own speech, I fully defend literally’s usage as an intensifier. Figuratively doesn’t function the same way and, like you said, doesn’t intensify at all, but creates psychological distance from the description. In a way, it’s like the difference between a simile (which comes out and tells you two objects are similar, but not the same as each other) and a metaphor (which equates two things directly.) My only objection to “literally” is it’s a boring, overused word.
I don’t have too many usage peeves, but “penultimate” is one of them. I actually don’t see it misused that often, but when I do, it really sticks out.
Enormity and penultimate have already been addressed.
I was saddened when the local paper (San Jose Mercury-News) had an article with flaunt when flout was called for. Saddened that both the writer and the editor let that one through.
I kind of feel sorry for the word “me.” It’s a perfectly good word, when used properly, but for some reason people have become so afraid that if they use it they will sound improper, so they use these tortured language gyrations to avoid it.
People need to understand that the word “loose” sounds like “moose”… it doesn’t hold the same meaning as “lose” which is pronounced like “snooze”…
The words to and too. The word “too” simply means also when used at the end of a sentence. If not at the end of a sentence it puts emphasis on the following word. And just because a sentence ends with the word to, it doesn’t mean you must end it with “too”. Some people misunderstand that rule.
Okay, 3.
And people who overuse “…”, mis-use parenthesis, and begin their sentences inappropriately. Err, I do that, hehe…
Y’know, I’ve been “corrected” on that point often enough that I’ve actually started responding this way, but I still hold that “good” and its variants are perfectly sensible and grammatical responses to this question.
You ask me how I am, and I answer “I am ”.
If X is an adverb, that means that it modifies the verb “am”, a form of “to be”, suggesting that I am commenting on a quality of my act of being. Responding with “I am well”, then, implies that I am particularly skilled at existing (eg, I dance well; I write well; I am well). Clearly, this is not the idea I’m trying to get across.
If X is an adjective, that means that it’s referring to the pronoun “I”, which means that I’m describing a quality of myself. Responding with “I am good” means that I attribute goodness to myself. “Goodness” is a rather mutable quality defined largely by context (good food tastes good; good perfume smells good; a good book could have any number of positive traits), and when attributed to a person in the context of this question, it is understood to imply good health or good spirits. Therefore, “I’m good”, while it may grate to certain ears, actually communicates the intended notion more logically and directly.
All of this, of course, is without considering the fact that answering this question with “well” results as often as not in blank stares, which ought to be reason enough to dispense with doing it.
Another one, which is not really related is when I approach someone and say “Hey, how’s it going?” and they reply “Hey, how’s it going?”… They don’t respond to my question and flip the question. Also works when saying "What’s up?.. the response alot of times will be “What’s up?”… I just don’t get it.
I always thought that behavior was an offshoot of “How Do you Do?”, which I was raised to understand is not a question requiring an answer, but merely a greeting for when you’re introduced to someone.
Along the same lines, although it’s admittedly not a usage issue, I love it when someone says hello, I say hello back, and they respond with “good, thanks”. Especially when they continue walking away from me without realizing it.
Or leave it out entirely. We know a metaphor when we hear one. There’s no need to say “I metaphorically died laughing.” Even worse to say “I died laughing, and it wasn’t a metaphor.”