I don't care if it's been around since the 18th century, or that Mark Twain and James Joyce used it to mean figuratively. I still don't like literally not meaning literally.
Another battle in the war between prescriptive grammarians ("words mean what they're supposed to mean") and descriptive grammarians ("words mean what people use them to mean").
Descriptive grammarians are right, of course, but it's a false dichotomy. We don't need to abandon arguing about the "proper" use of words just because people don't use them "properly". It's just a matter of picking our battles.
I think "literally" continues to be a battle worth fighting, because "literally" is a perfectly good word with an important meaning. If we accept that "literally" can be used to mean "figuratively", then we're making it awfully hard to mean what we say when we use "literally" to mean "literally". :)
In other words, I want to be able to say "Our television habits are literally killing us", and have people understand that I'm not just using hyperbole, I'm making a point. If we lose the battle for "literally", we lose that subtlety of meaning. I'm not fussy for fussy's sake, only when I think there's an important consequence.
And I don't particularly care which dead writers thought which way about the issue, though it's an interesting sidebar.
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Date: 2005-11-02 06:56 am (UTC)Descriptive grammarians are right, of course, but it's a false dichotomy. We don't need to abandon arguing about the "proper" use of words just because people don't use them "properly". It's just a matter of picking our battles.
I think "literally" continues to be a battle worth fighting, because "literally" is a perfectly good word with an important meaning. If we accept that "literally" can be used to mean "figuratively", then we're making it awfully hard to mean what we say when we use "literally" to mean "literally". :)
In other words, I want to be able to say "Our television habits are literally killing us", and have people understand that I'm not just using hyperbole, I'm making a point. If we lose the battle for "literally", we lose that subtlety of meaning. I'm not fussy for fussy's sake, only when I think there's an important consequence.
And I don't particularly care which dead writers thought which way about the issue, though it's an interesting sidebar.
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Date: 2005-11-02 06:57 am (UTC)