6 ms·

According to the dictionary, “literally” now also means “figuratively”

24 points by sampo 13y ago

lutusp 13y ago
I popularized this issue a few years ago: http://arachnoid.com/wrong/#Dictionary http://arachnoid.com/wrong/#Dictionary Now it's suddenly "big news".
tty 13y ago
>So it’s okay to use literally to mean figuratively as long as you really, really, really need to do so? Hmph. No need for the "hmph". It's how language works. Yes, a word can indeed have not only multiple meanings but also contrasting meanings. And there's nothing wrong with that nor is there a need to be judgmental about it. It's not a particularly new meaning either http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002611.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002611.h...
- arethuza 13y ago
  I encountered an interesting example of two constrasting meanings of "outstanding" in the final section of the final report of a multi-million pound research project - it ended with a bullet point list of the "oustanding" areas for the project with the intention of meaning "not settled or resolved" when in context it looked like it meant "Standing out among others of its kind; prominent.".
  - Schiphol 13y ago
    But these two outstandings are just different, no? Not contrasting in the sense made salient by the present discussion.
    - arethuza 13y ago
      In the context of that project final report they were meant to mean "the things we haven't done" but it looked like it meant "the best things we have done".
      - Schiphol 13y ago
        Right, I see what you mean.
- saraid216 13y ago
  There's even a word for it. Contronym. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  Gosh, did they really use really (3 times) in a sentence about the meaning of literally and not see the irony? For anyone else missing the point "really" doesn't necessarily mean real, "truly" doesn't necessarily mean true, "actually" doesn't necessarily mean actual, they often just add intensity to what comes after them, just like "literally".
  - InclinedPlane 13y ago
    Really is usually a no-op word. It's almost like "uh", it can really be added to sentences really almost anywhere without really changing anything or really improving anything. Really. A quick way to improve your writing is to get in the habit of editing yourself and removing words like "really" or "truly" and either leaving them out or using a better phrasing to get across what you mean.
- danso 13y ago
  Actually, not everyone agrees that that's how it works...whether society should value descriptive over prescriptive policies on its language is a huge debate among linguists. Just as programmers continue to argue over OOP vs functional, JavaScript vs CoffeeScript, etc Edit: whoops, forgot to link to arbitrary example http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_1998/ling001/prescription.html http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_1998/ling001/prescrip...
  - tty 13y ago
    >whether society should value descriptive over prescriptive policies on its language is a huge debate among linguists There's no such debate at all, whoever told you that is not a linguist. Linguistics is a science and it is inherently descriptive. It describes what it sees in natural language. It doesn't make judgment as to the worthiness or corectness of something. That's what laymen do, but they cannot reinforce their views through linguistics, only through distortion of linguistics.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > Linguistics is a science and it is inherently descriptive. One might go so far as to say that, because linguistics is a science, it is therefore descriptive.
      - claudius 13y ago
        However, there are linguists working in institutions that do prescribe the proper use of language – e.g. [0] in France and [1] in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. The idea to pass laws to change spelling may appear somewhat strange to others, though… [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_française https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_française [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwischenstaatliche_Kommission_für_deutsche_Rechtschreibung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwischenstaatliche_Kommission_... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_for_German_Orthography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_for_German_Orthography
        13y ago
- anonymous 13y ago
  I think the takeaway here is that the literal meaning of "literally" is useless. If you are having a dialogue, you'd just tell people you were not speaking hyperbole, you mean exactly what you say. If you're writing, you're using the literal meaning of words anyway.
- dataduck 13y ago
  In general I'd agree. But in this case we see the sort of destruction of language George Orwell warned about. By legitimising a use of the word "literally" which is counter both to its etymology, and to the intention of talking about communication in terms of the specific meanings of the words involved, we risk making it more difficult in practice to consider the specifics of what has been said.
  - claudius 13y ago
    Unfortunately, this destruction of language is not government-mandated, as Orwell feared, but results a) from the laziness of most people and b) from the increased effects these people have on ‘upper class’ language due to thinner class boundaries and modern media. a) definitely sucks, but b)?
  - Avshalom 13y ago
    for every "literally" we lose we gain a "twerk" AND a "jeggings" AND we steal (and give our own connotations to) a "kawaii" English is very much expanding. Orwell's jackboot may be coming but it will be a literal boot not a lack of words.
- gabemart 13y ago
  >And there's nothing wrong with that nor is there a need to be judgmental about it. I agree that there's no need to be judgmental about it. I wouldn't fault a particular person using "literally" this way. I disagree that there's nothing wrong with this kind of language drift. While it's nobody's fault, it makes English poorer. There are already lots of general-purpose intensifiers. English doesn't particularly need another one. The previous formal definition of "literally" was comparatively specific and fulfilled a useful role neatly and succinctly. I can't think of another single word to fulfill this role in the future. I feel similarly with the phrase "beg the question", which in common usage now means simply "raises the question" or "invites the question". It doesn't bother me because I think people who use it this way are stupid; it bothers me because there is no synonym for "begs the question" which is equally succinct.
  - kupaka 13y ago
    >While it's nobody's fault, it makes English poorer. There are already lots of general-purpose intensifiers. English doesn't particularly need another one. I'm more than a little bothered by this line of reasoning. Spoken languages aren't like programming languages, where having many ways to express the same thing can be seen as a detriment. Having more ways for one to express oneself can only make the language richer.
    - gabemart 13y ago
      In a vacuum, having another intensifier is a good thing even if it's very similar to existing intensifiers. My point was that getting another marginally useful intensifier at the expensive of a very useful clarifier makes the language less net poorer. In other words, "literally" meaning "figuratively" means it can no longer be unambiguously used to mean "not figuratively". The latter function is more useful than the former because there are lots of existing words for the former and only a few for the latter.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > I feel similarly with the phrase "beg the question", which in common usage now means simply "raises the question" or "invites the question". It doesn't bother me because I think people who use it this way are stupid; it bothers me because there is no synonym for "begs the question" which is equally succinct. Since the original sense of "begs the question" is inherently intransitive, and the modern sense is inherently transitive (and, further, the original sense can be rationalized as an intransitive version of the modern sense where the implied object is the proposition that the argument was attempting to justify), there is no conflict between the original and modern sense, so I don't see the problem. Also, the original sense of "begs the question" can be equivalently stated as "is a circular argument" which is nearly as succinct and uses words in something much more like there usual English senses, so even if the more modern sense of "begs the question" could create semantic ambiguity (which it can't, since its syntactically distinct), I still wouldn't agree that much useful was lost.
- Shish2k 13y ago
  > a word can indeed have not only multiple meanings but also contrasting meanings. And there's nothing wrong with that Given our current course, the logical conclusion is for every word in the dictionary to be replaced with "fuck" -- we'll just repeat that one word over and over again relying on context to tell us which of the thousand meanings is the intended one. "he's drunk" -> "fuck; Fucker's fucked" "she needs to pay more taxes than expected" -> "Fucker's fucked. Fuckers!" "they had sex" -> "fuckers fucked" "the sex was amazing" -> "fucking fuck... fuck!" This is all well and good for simplifying the writing of language, but when we reach the point of all words having overlapping and contrasting meanings and somebody writes "Fuck, fucking fuckedy fuck. Fuck?", what the fuck does that mean?
adwf 13y ago
I think people get confused over how dictionaries work. They aren't meant to dictate usage of language, but reflect it. If "literally" has come to mean its opposite in a large proportion of common usage, then that's what it means now. No matter how bizarre that may seem... Another way of thinking of this is as a foreigner learning English for the first time. If you hear someone using the word "literally" and you don't know what it means, you will look it up in the dictionary and expect to find all the various possibly meanings.
- saraid216 13y ago
  I attribute it to a misunderstanding of what authority is. People believe, and thusly treat, authorities as prescribers. As people who tell you what to do. That's not what an authority is. An authority is a heuristic. It's someone who has heard the question before and can answer it faster than reinventing the wheel. That's what a dictionary is. Someone else went and surveyed all the uses of a word and documented it so that you don't have to do it yourself. An authority is a search engine. Being authoritative is being a good search engine.
  - dTal 13y ago
    Ack. "Thusly". I see that far too often for every use to be "ironic". It is not a word, it is a joke at the expense of illiterate people, and now the joke is stale. Stop using it.
    - mhurron 13y ago
      Nonsense, the dictionary says it was used correctly: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thusly http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thusly
return0 13y ago
Obligatory Oatmeal: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally
tomp 13y ago
It is posts like this that make me realize how slow and outdated traditional media is, when they need almost a week to publish an article after it has been trending on front-page of reddit.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > It is posts like this that make me realize how slow and outdated traditional media is ... On the topic of correct grammar, s/media is/media are/
InclinedPlane 13y ago
Dictionaries also contain the words "ain't", "widdershins", "gallimaufry", and "cunt". Just because words exist or just because they have one possible meaning doesn't mean that suddenly you are forced to use them or ignore instances where language is used in a way you dislike. Go ahead and call people out on uses of the word "literally" in a figurative sense, there's nothing stopping you whether that usage is recorded in a dictionary or not.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  On the other hand, calling out a popular usage and giving the reason that it's "wrong" (rather than something you dislike on purely arbitrary grounds), is almost always baseless intellectual snobbery.
danso 13y ago
I've always thought the misuse of "beg the question", if not actively fought and corrected, would be precedent for all manner of linguistic perversions. Just this week I saw it misused in the New York Times by a quoted scientist. This case of "literally" is just us reaping what we sew for not towing the line. http://begthequestion.info/ http://begthequestion.info/
- venus 13y ago
  > This case of "literally" is just us reaping what we sew for not towing the line. Literally.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > This case of "literally" is just us reaping what we sew for not towing the line. Nice examples. I also regularly see "reigning in" when "reining in" is what's meant. Reigning is what a monarch does to a kingdom, reining is what a cowboy does to a horse.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  The latter two are examples of Mondegreens (or eggcorns): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen Actually, reading the article, it seems to make the distinction that those would be malapropisms instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malapropism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malapropism
- James_Duval 13y ago
  The thing is, "beg the question" as it is used in everyday language is much more transparent and easier to understand than its 'proper' usage. If you want to describe that specific fallacy in some way, there's a lovely phrase for that which already exists, describes the fallacy better, and uses fewer words - "petitio principii". "Beg the question" used in this sense strikes me as redundant, inaccurate as a translation and a description, clunky, and pointlessly confusing. I hope its misuse is not actively fought, and that people who wish to describe the fallacy find a better way of doing so.
  - 13y ago
losethos 13y ago
The world is perfectly just. God's temple is done. Just remember --- at Moses' birth males Hebrews were killed. It took 40 years and at Passover Egyptians were killed. God is just, and only just.
JoshTriplett 13y ago
I'm all for descriptivist language, but there's a difference between a new word or meaning coming around because people widely use it, and a common error that does not become right just because it became too common. It's a difference in perception. I'd argue that even with a descriptivist language, you need three things to produce new words or meanings: widespread usage, widespread understanding, and a perception of correctness (or at least the absence of perception of incorrectness). "literally" has only one of those. That's the same reason that "their" doesn't grow new meanings for "they are" and "a location distinct from 'here'": that error is widespread, and mostly understood in context, but nigh-universally perceived as incorrect.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > I'm all for descriptivist language, but there's a difference between a new word or meaning coming around because people widely use it, and a common error that does not become right just because it became too common. "Does not become right"? Translation: "I'm all for prescriptivist language." > and a perception of correctness (or at least the absence of perception of incorrectness). Seconded. In language, there's no "right", there's only how people choose to use words. > but nigh-universally perceived as incorrect. Not by linguists.
  - JoshTriplett 13y ago
    >> and a perception of correctness (or at least the absence of perception of incorrectness). > Seconded. > In language, there's no "right", there's only how people choose to use words. There is indeed a "right"; it's defined by the consensus of how people choose to perceive the speech and writings of others. If the vast majority of people consider something an error and a sign of a poor speaker/writer, that's something the speaker or writer should take into account, and it's something a dictionary should document: "if you use this you'll be perceived as incorrect".
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > There is indeed a "right"; it's defined by the consensus of how people choose to perceive the speech and writings of others. No, that's false. The sole purpose of language is to communicate, and that only requires two people. If two very intelligent youngsters create their own private language, and if the language produces communication, how can that not be called a legitimate use of language? You're speaking as though everyone should agree on the meaning of words, and the greater the level of agreement, the more legitimate the language. If that were true, there would be one language, not thousands, and something modeled on the French Academy would be in charge. But that's fiction, not reality. > and it's something a dictionary should document: "if you use this you'll be perceived as incorrect". Dream on. Lexicographers take note of word usage. When a word is used in a consistent way in ten recognized publications, that word and/or that meaning becomes official, and is entered into dictionaries. There is no "correct", there is only how people choose to use words. More here: http://arachnoid.com/wrong/#Dictionary http://arachnoid.com/wrong/#Dictionary
namenotrequired 13y ago
This reminds me of how Arabic is commonly described as "a language in which every word has its own meaning and exactly the opposite, and a third meaning of some kind of camel".
sixbrx 13y ago
Next up: "exponentially" to mean "a lot!", when there's just a single comparison being made and nothing in context which is varying. I think I'll have to be a snob and side against the masses and the "linguists" on that one. A lot depends on who you hang out with and read, I guess.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
DennisP 13y ago
I know language changes with time, but I can't help but feel a little saddened by this, as if an unruly mob had overrun the academy.
jaekwon 13y ago
This is plain silly. When people say "literally", they don't intend to say "figuratively". They literally intend to say literally. It's one thing to define a word, another thing to re-define a word to correct the speaker's intentions. Unless the definition includes a /sarc tag, then it's totally cool.
twelvechairs 13y ago
"really" is no different. "this is really shit" and "this is literally shit" aren't far apart in the base words but people will judge the second far more harshly than the first. neither of them actually mean "figuratively", they are used to add emphasis like "very"
Elrac 13y ago
I don't have a problem with dictionaries documenting this travesty of language; their makers are merely doing their jobs. I am, however, angrily resentful of the fact that ignorant and barely literate people, often obnoxious simpletons hauled before TV cameras to share their ignorance with the nation, are able to dumb down the language by blurring and fuzzing the definitions of words in common usage. A related pet peeve is the ghastly aberration of saying "I could care less" to express the exact opposite. Is there some kind of sneaking Orwellism going on, where black becomes white and good is evil? Is it to do with the fact that TV has replaced the written word, and the Internet lets the illiterate publish to vast audiences without the benefit of a competent editor? I am (literally) literally enraged about this.
xefer 13y ago
The story and much of the commentary I've seen on it seems misplaced because of a conflation of the descriptive vs. prescriptive nature of dictionaries. The addition of this "figuratively" meaning to "literally" doesn't represent and endorsement of it. The dictionary is being descriptive of what is out there. At the same time the statement "it’s okay to use literally to mean figuratively" seems to indicate that the author sees the dictionary as being prescriptive; that its appearance in the dictionary, ipso facto, "legitimizes" it. The bottom line is: you still sound like an idiot using it in that way. Its description in the dictionary is not prescriptive of its usage.
od2m 13y ago
Flammable equals Inflammable? What a country!
dragonwriter 13y ago
There is a problem with this definition, but its not the usual one that people complain about ("its the opposite of the 'real' meaning"). The figurative meaning of "literally" isn't "figuratively", its an intensifier for a situation in which the fact that the usage of the modified word is figurative is already clear from context.

24 points by sampo 13y ago

I popularized this issue a few years ago: http://arachnoid.com/wrong/#Dictionary http://arachnoid.com/wrong/#Dictionary Now it's suddenly "big news".

tty 13y ago

>So it’s okay to use literally to mean figuratively as long as you really, really, really need to do so? Hmph. No need for the "hmph". It's how language works. Yes, a word can indeed have not only multiple meanings but also contrasting meanings. And there's nothing wrong with that nor is there a need to be judgmental about it. It's not a particularly new meaning either http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002611.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002611.h...

arethuza 13y ago
I encountered an interesting example of two constrasting meanings of "outstanding" in the final section of the final report of a multi-million pound research project - it ended with a bullet point list of the "oustanding" areas for the project with the intention of meaning "not settled or resolved" when in context it looked like it meant "Standing out among others of its kind; prominent.".
- Schiphol 13y ago
  But these two outstandings are just different, no? Not contrasting in the sense made salient by the present discussion.
  - arethuza 13y ago
    In the context of that project final report they were meant to mean "the things we haven't done" but it looked like it meant "the best things we have done".
    - Schiphol 13y ago
      Right, I see what you mean.
saraid216 13y ago
There's even a word for it. Contronym. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
Gosh, did they really use really (3 times) in a sentence about the meaning of literally and not see the irony? For anyone else missing the point "really" doesn't necessarily mean real, "truly" doesn't necessarily mean true, "actually" doesn't necessarily mean actual, they often just add intensity to what comes after them, just like "literally".
- InclinedPlane 13y ago
  Really is usually a no-op word. It's almost like "uh", it can really be added to sentences really almost anywhere without really changing anything or really improving anything. Really. A quick way to improve your writing is to get in the habit of editing yourself and removing words like "really" or "truly" and either leaving them out or using a better phrasing to get across what you mean.
danso 13y ago
Actually, not everyone agrees that that's how it works...whether society should value descriptive over prescriptive policies on its language is a huge debate among linguists. Just as programmers continue to argue over OOP vs functional, JavaScript vs CoffeeScript, etc Edit: whoops, forgot to link to arbitrary example http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_1998/ling001/prescription.html http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_1998/ling001/prescrip...
- tty 13y ago
  >whether society should value descriptive over prescriptive policies on its language is a huge debate among linguists There's no such debate at all, whoever told you that is not a linguist. Linguistics is a science and it is inherently descriptive. It describes what it sees in natural language. It doesn't make judgment as to the worthiness or corectness of something. That's what laymen do, but they cannot reinforce their views through linguistics, only through distortion of linguistics.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > Linguistics is a science and it is inherently descriptive. One might go so far as to say that, because linguistics is a science, it is therefore descriptive.
    - claudius 13y ago
      However, there are linguists working in institutions that do prescribe the proper use of language – e.g. [0] in France and [1] in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. The idea to pass laws to change spelling may appear somewhat strange to others, though… [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_française https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_française [1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwischenstaatliche_Kommission_für_deutsche_Rechtschreibung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwischenstaatliche_Kommission_... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_for_German_Orthography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_for_German_Orthography
      - 13y ago
anonymous 13y ago
I think the takeaway here is that the literal meaning of "literally" is useless. If you are having a dialogue, you'd just tell people you were not speaking hyperbole, you mean exactly what you say. If you're writing, you're using the literal meaning of words anyway.
dataduck 13y ago
In general I'd agree. But in this case we see the sort of destruction of language George Orwell warned about. By legitimising a use of the word "literally" which is counter both to its etymology, and to the intention of talking about communication in terms of the specific meanings of the words involved, we risk making it more difficult in practice to consider the specifics of what has been said.
- claudius 13y ago
  Unfortunately, this destruction of language is not government-mandated, as Orwell feared, but results a) from the laziness of most people and b) from the increased effects these people have on ‘upper class’ language due to thinner class boundaries and modern media. a) definitely sucks, but b)?
- Avshalom 13y ago
  for every "literally" we lose we gain a "twerk" AND a "jeggings" AND we steal (and give our own connotations to) a "kawaii" English is very much expanding. Orwell's jackboot may be coming but it will be a literal boot not a lack of words.
gabemart 13y ago
>And there's nothing wrong with that nor is there a need to be judgmental about it. I agree that there's no need to be judgmental about it. I wouldn't fault a particular person using "literally" this way. I disagree that there's nothing wrong with this kind of language drift. While it's nobody's fault, it makes English poorer. There are already lots of general-purpose intensifiers. English doesn't particularly need another one. The previous formal definition of "literally" was comparatively specific and fulfilled a useful role neatly and succinctly. I can't think of another single word to fulfill this role in the future. I feel similarly with the phrase "beg the question", which in common usage now means simply "raises the question" or "invites the question". It doesn't bother me because I think people who use it this way are stupid; it bothers me because there is no synonym for "begs the question" which is equally succinct.
- kupaka 13y ago
  >While it's nobody's fault, it makes English poorer. There are already lots of general-purpose intensifiers. English doesn't particularly need another one. I'm more than a little bothered by this line of reasoning. Spoken languages aren't like programming languages, where having many ways to express the same thing can be seen as a detriment. Having more ways for one to express oneself can only make the language richer.
  - gabemart 13y ago
    In a vacuum, having another intensifier is a good thing even if it's very similar to existing intensifiers. My point was that getting another marginally useful intensifier at the expensive of a very useful clarifier makes the language less net poorer. In other words, "literally" meaning "figuratively" means it can no longer be unambiguously used to mean "not figuratively". The latter function is more useful than the former because there are lots of existing words for the former and only a few for the latter.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > I feel similarly with the phrase "beg the question", which in common usage now means simply "raises the question" or "invites the question". It doesn't bother me because I think people who use it this way are stupid; it bothers me because there is no synonym for "begs the question" which is equally succinct. Since the original sense of "begs the question" is inherently intransitive, and the modern sense is inherently transitive (and, further, the original sense can be rationalized as an intransitive version of the modern sense where the implied object is the proposition that the argument was attempting to justify), there is no conflict between the original and modern sense, so I don't see the problem. Also, the original sense of "begs the question" can be equivalently stated as "is a circular argument" which is nearly as succinct and uses words in something much more like there usual English senses, so even if the more modern sense of "begs the question" could create semantic ambiguity (which it can't, since its syntactically distinct), I still wouldn't agree that much useful was lost.
Shish2k 13y ago
> a word can indeed have not only multiple meanings but also contrasting meanings. And there's nothing wrong with that Given our current course, the logical conclusion is for every word in the dictionary to be replaced with "fuck" -- we'll just repeat that one word over and over again relying on context to tell us which of the thousand meanings is the intended one. "he's drunk" -> "fuck; Fucker's fucked" "she needs to pay more taxes than expected" -> "Fucker's fucked. Fuckers!" "they had sex" -> "fuckers fucked" "the sex was amazing" -> "fucking fuck... fuck!" This is all well and good for simplifying the writing of language, but when we reach the point of all words having overlapping and contrasting meanings and somebody writes "Fuck, fucking fuckedy fuck. Fuck?", what the fuck does that mean?

adwf 13y ago

I think people get confused over how dictionaries work. They aren't meant to dictate usage of language, but reflect it. If "literally" has come to mean its opposite in a large proportion of common usage, then that's what it means now. No matter how bizarre that may seem... Another way of thinking of this is as a foreigner learning English for the first time. If you hear someone using the word "literally" and you don't know what it means, you will look it up in the dictionary and expect to find all the various possibly meanings.

saraid216 13y ago
I attribute it to a misunderstanding of what authority is. People believe, and thusly treat, authorities as prescribers. As people who tell you what to do. That's not what an authority is. An authority is a heuristic. It's someone who has heard the question before and can answer it faster than reinventing the wheel. That's what a dictionary is. Someone else went and surveyed all the uses of a word and documented it so that you don't have to do it yourself. An authority is a search engine. Being authoritative is being a good search engine.
- dTal 13y ago
  Ack. "Thusly". I see that far too often for every use to be "ironic". It is not a word, it is a joke at the expense of illiterate people, and now the joke is stale. Stop using it.
  - mhurron 13y ago
    Nonsense, the dictionary says it was used correctly: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thusly http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thusly

return0 13y ago

Obligatory Oatmeal: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally

tomp 13y ago

It is posts like this that make me realize how slow and outdated traditional media is, when they need almost a week to publish an article after it has been trending on front-page of reddit.

lutusp 13y ago
> It is posts like this that make me realize how slow and outdated traditional media is ... On the topic of correct grammar, s/media is/media are/

InclinedPlane 13y ago

Dictionaries also contain the words "ain't", "widdershins", "gallimaufry", and "cunt". Just because words exist or just because they have one possible meaning doesn't mean that suddenly you are forced to use them or ignore instances where language is used in a way you dislike. Go ahead and call people out on uses of the word "literally" in a figurative sense, there's nothing stopping you whether that usage is recorded in a dictionary or not.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago
On the other hand, calling out a popular usage and giving the reason that it's "wrong" (rather than something you dislike on purely arbitrary grounds), is almost always baseless intellectual snobbery.

danso 13y ago

I've always thought the misuse of "beg the question", if not actively fought and corrected, would be precedent for all manner of linguistic perversions. Just this week I saw it misused in the New York Times by a quoted scientist. This case of "literally" is just us reaping what we sew for not towing the line. http://begthequestion.info/ http://begthequestion.info/

venus 13y ago
> This case of "literally" is just us reaping what we sew for not towing the line. Literally.
lutusp 13y ago
> This case of "literally" is just us reaping what we sew for not towing the line. Nice examples. I also regularly see "reigning in" when "reining in" is what's meant. Reigning is what a monarch does to a kingdom, reining is what a cowboy does to a horse.
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
The latter two are examples of Mondegreens (or eggcorns): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondegreen Actually, reading the article, it seems to make the distinction that those would be malapropisms instead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malapropism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malapropism
James_Duval 13y ago
The thing is, "beg the question" as it is used in everyday language is much more transparent and easier to understand than its 'proper' usage. If you want to describe that specific fallacy in some way, there's a lovely phrase for that which already exists, describes the fallacy better, and uses fewer words - "petitio principii". "Beg the question" used in this sense strikes me as redundant, inaccurate as a translation and a description, clunky, and pointlessly confusing. I hope its misuse is not actively fought, and that people who wish to describe the fallacy find a better way of doing so.
- 13y ago

losethos 13y ago

The world is perfectly just. God's temple is done. Just remember --- at Moses' birth males Hebrews were killed. It took 40 years and at Passover Egyptians were killed. God is just, and only just.

JoshTriplett 13y ago

I'm all for descriptivist language, but there's a difference between a new word or meaning coming around because people widely use it, and a common error that does not become right just because it became too common. It's a difference in perception. I'd argue that even with a descriptivist language, you need three things to produce new words or meanings: widespread usage, widespread understanding, and a perception of correctness (or at least the absence of perception of incorrectness). "literally" has only one of those. That's the same reason that "their" doesn't grow new meanings for "they are" and "a location distinct from 'here'": that error is widespread, and mostly understood in context, but nigh-universally perceived as incorrect.

lutusp 13y ago
> I'm all for descriptivist language, but there's a difference between a new word or meaning coming around because people widely use it, and a common error that does not become right just because it became too common. "Does not become right"? Translation: "I'm all for prescriptivist language." > and a perception of correctness (or at least the absence of perception of incorrectness). Seconded. In language, there's no "right", there's only how people choose to use words. > but nigh-universally perceived as incorrect. Not by linguists.
- JoshTriplett 13y ago
  >> and a perception of correctness (or at least the absence of perception of incorrectness). > Seconded. > In language, there's no "right", there's only how people choose to use words. There is indeed a "right"; it's defined by the consensus of how people choose to perceive the speech and writings of others. If the vast majority of people consider something an error and a sign of a poor speaker/writer, that's something the speaker or writer should take into account, and it's something a dictionary should document: "if you use this you'll be perceived as incorrect".
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > There is indeed a "right"; it's defined by the consensus of how people choose to perceive the speech and writings of others. No, that's false. The sole purpose of language is to communicate, and that only requires two people. If two very intelligent youngsters create their own private language, and if the language produces communication, how can that not be called a legitimate use of language? You're speaking as though everyone should agree on the meaning of words, and the greater the level of agreement, the more legitimate the language. If that were true, there would be one language, not thousands, and something modeled on the French Academy would be in charge. But that's fiction, not reality. > and it's something a dictionary should document: "if you use this you'll be perceived as incorrect". Dream on. Lexicographers take note of word usage. When a word is used in a consistent way in ten recognized publications, that word and/or that meaning becomes official, and is entered into dictionaries. There is no "correct", there is only how people choose to use words. More here: http://arachnoid.com/wrong/#Dictionary http://arachnoid.com/wrong/#Dictionary

namenotrequired 13y ago

This reminds me of how Arabic is commonly described as "a language in which every word has its own meaning and exactly the opposite, and a third meaning of some kind of camel".

sixbrx 13y ago

Next up: "exponentially" to mean "a lot!", when there's just a single comparison being made and nothing in context which is varying. I think I'll have to be a snob and side against the masses and the "linguists" on that one. A lot depends on who you hang out with and read, I guess.

deleted 13y ago

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DennisP 13y ago

I know language changes with time, but I can't help but feel a little saddened by this, as if an unruly mob had overrun the academy.

jaekwon 13y ago

This is plain silly. When people say "literally", they don't intend to say "figuratively". They literally intend to say literally. It's one thing to define a word, another thing to re-define a word to correct the speaker's intentions. Unless the definition includes a /sarc tag, then it's totally cool.

twelvechairs 13y ago

"really" is no different. "this is really shit" and "this is literally shit" aren't far apart in the base words but people will judge the second far more harshly than the first. neither of them actually mean "figuratively", they are used to add emphasis like "very"

Elrac 13y ago

I don't have a problem with dictionaries documenting this travesty of language; their makers are merely doing their jobs. I am, however, angrily resentful of the fact that ignorant and barely literate people, often obnoxious simpletons hauled before TV cameras to share their ignorance with the nation, are able to dumb down the language by blurring and fuzzing the definitions of words in common usage. A related pet peeve is the ghastly aberration of saying "I could care less" to express the exact opposite. Is there some kind of sneaking Orwellism going on, where black becomes white and good is evil? Is it to do with the fact that TV has replaced the written word, and the Internet lets the illiterate publish to vast audiences without the benefit of a competent editor? I am (literally) literally enraged about this.

xefer 13y ago

The story and much of the commentary I've seen on it seems misplaced because of a conflation of the descriptive vs. prescriptive nature of dictionaries. The addition of this "figuratively" meaning to "literally" doesn't represent and endorsement of it. The dictionary is being descriptive of what is out there. At the same time the statement "it’s okay to use literally to mean figuratively" seems to indicate that the author sees the dictionary as being prescriptive; that its appearance in the dictionary, ipso facto, "legitimizes" it. The bottom line is: you still sound like an idiot using it in that way. Its description in the dictionary is not prescriptive of its usage.

od2m 13y ago

Flammable equals Inflammable? What a country!

dragonwriter 13y ago

There is a problem with this definition, but its not the usual one that people complain about ("its the opposite of the 'real' meaning"). The figurative meaning of "literally" isn't "figuratively", its an intensifier for a situation in which the fact that the usage of the modified word is figurative is already clear from context.