4 ms·
This is a lost cause, like "hacker" and "MiB" and "literally".
by erik_seaberg 8y ago
This is a lost cause, like "hacker" and "MiB" and "literally".
- shmerl 8y agoWhat's wrong with "literally"?
- konradb 8y agoIt is now often used to mean 'figuratively' or merely for emphasis.
- shmerl 8y agoI've never encountered such usage (as figuratively). For emphasis yes, that's not uncommon. But why is the later wrong?
- konradb 8y agoIf I understand your question you asking why it is wrong to use literally for emphasis? I guess that depends on whether you are a linguistic prescriptivist or not (I probably err towards that side, alas, a recipe for unhappiness!). A linguistic prescriptivist might say it was wrong because people might say something they want to emphasise like 'my phone is literally blowing up' - but according to the traditional meaning of the word literally, that means it would be literally blowing up, like an actual explosion. Once 'literally' just means 'emphasise this' then you have to go into further contortions if you actually want to express something that means something that is exactly as described, not figuratively.
- apendleton 8y agoInterestingly, "literally" itself was likely exactly such a contortion to deal with the fact that "really" became an intensifier when before it meant that the manner of something was, you know, real.
- konradb 8y agoLike a linguistic journey through the years to find and describe truth, always being evaded!
- shmerl 8y ago> my phone is literally blowing up I suppose emphasis can turn into exaggeration, then literally is indeed a bad fit. But it can be emphasizing something without exaggeration too. I.e. "literally days ago". Which indeed can mean a few days ago, but it's emphasizing it. I don't think it's a wrong usage.
- dbatten 8y agoCan you show me an example? Most of the examples I've seen are cases where people are using the word "literally" in a hyperbolic sense, which I would argue is perfectly legitimate. For example, suppose somebody says "I'm so hungry, I could literally eat an elephant." It's obvious that they're being hyperbolic because of course nobody eats elephants. Adding literally just adds to the hyperbole because it makes the sentence that much more ridiculous. It's a figure of speech and perfectly legitimate, IMHO.
- thomk 8y agoAnd what is wrong with Men in Black? I love that movie.
- _nalply 8y agoIt's about mebibyte (2^20 bytes, unit symbol MiB), compared to megabyte (10^6 bytes). For example a harddisk with a terabyte capacity does not have space for 2^30=1,099,511,627,776 bytes but about 10% less. Some disk management tools however were based on base 2 measurements, and the customer might cry foul because the tool reported only about 930 gigabytes, err gibibytes.
- mchahn 8y agoI prefer MB and Mb.
- 0x4f3759df 8y agoand crypto
- Someone1234 8y agoAnother one, the word "free." Much like literally it has lost its original meaning and now means "included." For example, "Get a free widget with this 12 month magazine subscription ($12.99/month)!" And then people will genuinely argue that the widget is "free" in spite of it being tied to $150+ in mandatory expenditure. The word people are looking for is included, the widget is INCLUDED with a 12 month/$12.99/month subscription, there's nothing "free" about it. Nothing about the above is contrived either, these "free" ads and claims are all around us.