RockBottomthe wall street journal today literally asking "but what do dead kids mean for the GDP?"
I don’t think OP knows what literally means. The wsj did not ask the question in the title. It asked a different question.
Oh I’m with you, but I stopped fighting for the word “literally” when the damn dictionaries gave up and added shit like this:
2 informal : in effect : VIRTUALLY —used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible
I literally died of embarrassment.
… will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or inju
I still think there are different standards for filler words during conversations and titles in writing. In this case, the post title is simply a lie. For example:
Title: Florida Man Actually has Three Legs.
Content: guy’s got such a big dick, he’s practically a tripod.
In this case, that’s a misleading title.
I hear you. There’s room for confusion in much more than just titles, too. Often when someone reports something “literally” happened it’s some thing on the edge of credulity, but not past it, and you have to stop and clarify “wait, so the cop asked to search your car and you literally shit your pants?”
jballs
WesDym@scarabic Depends on the dictionary. Some are better than this.
Anyway, you don't have to accept what M-W says if you don't want to. No one owns or controls English.
Dictionaries have armies of people who decide these things, based chiefly on where they stand on the P-D spectrum. M-W is "strongly descriptive", meaning they cotton to popular misuse. And that's a view you can accept or not, as you please.
Some of the more 'popular' dictionaries do this to make more money over time.
Not all dictionaries, true. But enough of them have given in that appealing to dictionaries at all becomes a stalemate. Good luck debating the D-P spectrum with someone who can’t use “literally properly.
And no one owns English, true. That also means though that I’m in no position to complain about anyone’s usage of words. Eh. It’s just not a battle I pick anymore.
I’m not a hardcore prescriptivist - I just dislike changes that destroy useful nuances. And I think that’s a good, utilitarian standard we should be able to apply universally.
Like nowadays “decimate” just means the same thing as “devastate” or “destroy” and we no longer have a specific word for “reduce by one-tenth.” Sure, that word is only occasionally needed, but we didn’t need a third word for destroy/devastate at all. And I still wonder for half a second, when someone talks about an army being decimated, if they mean 1/10 or totally.
The dilution of “literally” is similar. It reduces our options for specificity and often leaves you confused about what someone is saying. That’s a bad change IMHO and dictionaries should resist it. The whole point of dictionaries was to retard the morphing of language. They’re a big reason that change has slowed down since the times of Chaucer. But they have abdicated this and become mere linguistic enthographers.
I stopped fighting for the word “literally” when the damn dictionaries gave up and added shit like this:
That other guys link says they did that over a hundred years ago.
But I guess that was just for the unabridged dictionary.
