― beanz (beanz), Friday, 17 February 2006 12:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― fortunate hazel (f. hazel), Friday, 17 February 2006 12:19 (eighteen years ago) link
― Mr Jones (Mr Jones), Friday, 17 February 2006 12:42 (eighteen years ago) link
― beanz (beanz), Friday, 17 February 2006 13:03 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Friday, 17 February 2006 15:09 (eighteen years ago) link
― Huk-L (Huk-L), Friday, 17 February 2006 15:12 (eighteen years ago) link
― Huk-L (Huk-L), Friday, 17 February 2006 15:13 (eighteen years ago) link
― sunny successor (katharine), Friday, 17 February 2006 15:20 (eighteen years ago) link
― Huk-L (Huk-L), Friday, 17 February 2006 15:21 (eighteen years ago) link
and can't literally be used in place of virtually (which is not literal, obv.) when it relates to effect?
why can't monsters get along with other monsters?
― sunny successor (katharine), Friday, 17 February 2006 15:38 (eighteen years ago) link
― Mädchen (Madchen), Friday, 17 February 2006 15:42 (eighteen years ago) link
― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Friday, 17 February 2006 15:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― Lenny and Squiggy Present Lenny and the Squigtones (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 17 February 2006 15:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Friday, 17 February 2006 16:01 (eighteen years ago) link
― Alba (Alba), Friday, 17 February 2006 16:02 (eighteen years ago) link
― elmo, patron saint of nausea (allocryptic), Friday, 17 February 2006 16:03 (eighteen years ago) link
― ,,, Friday, 17 February 2006 16:05 (eighteen years ago) link
― mark p (Mark P), Friday, 17 February 2006 16:06 (eighteen years ago) link
― Abbott (Abbott), Friday, 17 February 2006 16:09 (eighteen years ago) link
Nice.
can't you use 'literally' ummm not literally?
But why use it to mean completely the opposite of what it means? Why add a word to a metaphor that means 'this is not a metaphor'? 'Invariably' is annoying like this - people keep using it to mean 'often' instead of 'absolutely every time, without variation'.
― Tehrannosaurus HoBB (the pirate king), Friday, 17 February 2006 17:37 (eighteen years ago) link
"i literally shat my pants"
umm... are you sure?
― electric sound of jim (and why not) (electricsound), Saturday, 18 February 2006 07:17 (eighteen years ago) link
― Mr Jones (Mr Jones), Saturday, 18 February 2006 12:23 (eighteen years ago) link
http://www.slate.com/id/2129105/
― t_g, Monday, 20 February 2006 00:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― beanz (beanz), Monday, 20 February 2006 10:12 (eighteen years ago) link
― Zora (Zora), Monday, 20 February 2006 16:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― Redd Harvest (Ken L), Monday, 20 February 2006 17:04 (eighteen years ago) link
― Redd Harvest (Ken L), Monday, 20 February 2006 17:07 (eighteen years ago) link
― Redd Harvest (Ken L), Monday, 20 February 2006 17:11 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 20 February 2006 18:37 (eighteen years ago) link
I remember a physics gcse class many years ago where my teacher told us that if we didn't do X in the exam, we'd literally be throwing marks down the drain.
There was a guy in the class called Mark and the idea of throwing him (and others like him obv.) down a drain was rather appealing.
― uptoeleven (uptoeleven), Monday, 20 February 2006 20:35 (eighteen years ago) link
― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Monday, 20 February 2006 20:40 (eighteen years ago) link
― Redd Harvest (Ken L), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 06:12 (eighteen years ago) link
was that deliberate?
TS: literally vs. it's academic
― Bob Six (bobbysix), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 13:43 (eighteen years ago) link
― ken c (ken c), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 14:13 (eighteen years ago) link
I mean umm, No. If only I were that clever.
― uptoeleven (uptoeleven), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 15:07 (eighteen years ago) link
― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 15:17 (eighteen years ago) link
FUFUFUFUFUFUFUFUFU!!!!
― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 15:20 (eighteen years ago) link
― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 15:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― ken c (ken c), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 15:44 (eighteen years ago) link
― Pangolino 2, Tuesday, 21 February 2006 18:25 (eighteen years ago) link
― Allyzay Rofflesberger (allyzay), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 18:47 (eighteen years ago) link
Aw, ken, jhoshea is just being effusive.
― Aimless (Aimless), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 18:53 (eighteen years ago) link
If you doubt this to be true, just check out my personal website: http://www.adorasvitak.com/Main.html
― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Tuesday, 21 February 2006 19:41 (eighteen years ago) link
"Heat stroke can literally fry your brain like a boiled egg"
― ledge, Tuesday, 20 May 2008 22:18 (sixteen years ago) link
"The Whig Party literally fell apart during the 1850's"
― tricked by a toothless cobra, Wednesday, 21 May 2008 03:59 (sixteen years ago) link
Those crazy fried boiled eggs.
― Trayce, Wednesday, 21 May 2008 04:10 (sixteen years ago) link
During coverage of the big Bay Area earthquake in...whatever year the quake happened during the World Series, I was very irritated at the news people for using the word thusly: "The freeway (house, bridge, etc.) literally collapsed." Yes, it's true, the top of the freeway did fall, but was there ever some question that its collapse might have been figurative?? (What they really meant was "The freeway fucking collapsed!")
― Jesse, Wednesday, 21 May 2008 04:29 (sixteen years ago) link
Any Jamie Oliver tv show.
― svend, Wednesday, 21 May 2008 04:32 (sixteen years ago) link
It's deliberate but it's so awesome I don't care:
when i was younger, there was no such thing as irony, and if there was, no decent person had ever heard of it. now--its irony in the shower, irony for breakfast, irony in your afternoon nap. irony has literally kidnapped everything good and decent and tied it to a chair and literally beaten it.
-- max, Tuesday, 26 August 2008 06:33 (Yesterday) Bookmark Link
― Autumn Almanac, Tuesday, 26 August 2008 21:53 (fifteen years ago) link
joe
biden
stop
― goole, Tuesday, 26 August 2008 21:56 (fifteen years ago) link
(implied "literally"?)
This condition is becoming particularly severe for the group that economists call younger millennials: the young adults who entered the job market in the wake of the recession, a period in which the unemployment rate among 20- to 24-year-olds reached 17 percent, when graduate school competition grew more fierce and credit standards tightened. Many also saw their parents struggle through a pay cut, a job loss or another economic disruption during the recession.
These troubles, many economists fear, left serious scars, and not just psychic ones.
― space phwoar (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 27 March 2013 13:32 (eleven years ago) link
I was just thinking, if you "literally dwarf" someone, does that mean you turn them into a dwarf?
― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Wednesday, 5 June 2013 21:51 (ten years ago) link
http://oi43.tinypic.com/9ulzlu.jpg
― Merdeyeux, Monday, 12 August 2013 13:59 (ten years ago) link
cool
― congratulations (n/a), Monday, 12 August 2013 17:19 (ten years ago) link
WHAT
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 12 August 2013 17:20 (ten years ago) link
i just literally shit my pants at that
― Z S, Monday, 12 August 2013 17:25 (ten years ago) link
and i mean that literally
as in, i feel very strongly about that
Usage Note: For more than a hundred years, critics have remarked on the incoherency of using literally in a way that suggests the exact opposite of its primary sense of "in a manner that accords with the literal sense of the words." In 1926, for example, H.W. Fowler cited the example "The 300,000 Unionists ... will be literally thrown to the wolves." The practice does not stem from a change in the meaning of literally itself--if it did, the word would long since have come to mean "virtually" or "figuratively" but from a natural tendency to use the word as a general intensive, as in They had literally no help from the government on the project, where no contrast with the figurative sense of the words is intended.
― fit and working again, Monday, 12 August 2013 17:26 (ten years ago) link
I am literally tearing the skin off of my face and throwing it at the computer screen
― OH MY GOD HE'S OOGLY (DJP), Monday, 12 August 2013 17:27 (ten years ago) link
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/literally?s=t
― fit and working again, Monday, 12 August 2013 17:28 (ten years ago) link
literally an intensive
― BIG HOOS aka the denigrated boogeyman (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Monday, 12 August 2013 18:19 (ten years ago) link
descriptivists win again!http://www.hdwpapers.com/thumbs/charlie_brown_happy_wallpaper-t2.jpg
― Philip Nunez, Monday, 12 August 2013 18:36 (ten years ago) link
http://i975.photobucket.com/albums/ae232/daggerlee/6E6B8B4E-D25F-4130-A55D-701988CB912F-339-0000001A8A9067BA_zps3fd3354a.jpg
― 乒乓, Wednesday, 14 August 2013 20:37 (ten years ago) link
sweet domain name tho
― markers, Wednesday, 14 August 2013 20:39 (ten years ago) link
aa.com/literallyflybetter
― In the airplane over the .CSS (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 15 August 2013 01:19 (ten years ago) link
they used it correctly!
― fit and working again, Thursday, 15 August 2013 01:40 (ten years ago) link
what does "quite literally" mean, though? "actually literally" or "completely literally"?
that copy reads like: "hey, look, we're using 'literally' in the literal sense here, not figuratively as an intensive."
― slugbuggy, Thursday, 15 August 2013 15:18 (ten years ago) link
'you would be surprised how literally'
― j., Thursday, 15 August 2013 15:21 (ten years ago) link
literally literally
― I tweeted too much and I am in jail. (crüt), Thursday, 15 August 2013 15:21 (ten years ago) link
what does it mean to literally raise the bar
― 乒乓, Thursday, 15 August 2013 15:24 (ten years ago) link
The bar, it is in the air. When once it was on the ground.
― emil.y, Thursday, 15 August 2013 15:26 (ten years ago) link
Problem is that if you do read that sentence with 'literally raising the bar' actually being literal, it stops making sense. 'We're quite literally raising the bar' is fine. Adding '...on what flying should be' only makes sense if you're being figurative.
― emil.y, Thursday, 15 August 2013 15:27 (ten years ago) link
"We are serving you alcohol while in the air on what flying should be"? Nope.
"Our booze is served during the journey on what flying should be"? Nuh-uh.
"Look how high our drinks are on what flying should be"? Noooooo.
― emil.y, Thursday, 15 August 2013 15:29 (ten years ago) link
maybe there is a giant immobilizing metal bar resting on one of their planes and "what flying should be" is yodaspeak for "what should be flying"
― I tweeted too much and I am in jail. (crüt), Thursday, 15 August 2013 15:33 (ten years ago) link
it makes sense, but it's pretty corny... reminds me of some bad pun Bob Saget would use on America's Funniest Home Videos. i read it like "we're literally raising the bar! on what flying should be". cue goofy music and canned audience laughter as a drunk passenger stumbles around and vomits on an old lady.
― Spectrum, Thursday, 15 August 2013 15:36 (ten years ago) link
* laughs *
― BIG HOOS aka the denigrated boogeyman (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 15 August 2013 15:52 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPz4mKHd0FE
― In the airplane over the .CSS (Le Bateau Ivre), Thursday, 15 August 2013 16:04 (ten years ago) link
The thing is that when I hear the world 'literally' used like this in the wild, person is nearly always saying something enthusiastic, impressed, excited or good humoured
― cardamon, Friday, 16 August 2013 00:20 (ten years ago) link
i thought this was a good one. there is a hotel in boston whose restaurant is called the ruby room, and suitably the decor is all red. the section for corporate events is headed:
Meetings that will have you seeing red. Well, not literally.
so precisely and completely wrong, really an accomplishment
― Roberto Spiralli, Saturday, 7 December 2013 22:49 (ten years ago) link
idk you could be blind & irascible
― veneer timber (imago), Saturday, 7 December 2013 23:05 (ten years ago) link
Palm trees, ivory beaches and a languid lifestyle: to outsiders, the South Pacific lives up to its paradise image. But the islanders themselves are weighed down by problems – literally. The region has the world's highest obesity rates, along with associated chronic diseases.
― Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (nakhchivan), Friday, 11 July 2014 23:02 (nine years ago) link
it means "listen to me"
― brimstead, Friday, 11 July 2014 23:06 (nine years ago) link
literally one month ago
― calstars, Monday, 28 May 2018 03:01 (six years ago) link
https://ig.me/am8rz2YnB48osC
― calstars, Wednesday, 25 July 2018 00:13 (five years ago) link
The misuse of "literally" is most often an attempt at hyperbole, in the mistaken belief that overstating the truth makes one's misstatements stronger and more persuasive.
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 25 July 2018 03:56 (five years ago) link
LITERALLY vs ACTUALLY vs Just say it vs Shut up
― calstars, Wednesday, 24 April 2019 16:38 (five years ago) link
posters itt are literally cops
― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, 24 April 2019 17:11 (five years ago) link
literal lol
― j., Wednesday, 24 April 2019 18:42 (five years ago) link