Literally

I thought people had stopped doing this? I don't think I've heard anyone misuse literally in like 5 years.

I was literally glued to my seat

My favourite example of this stems from when a high school teacher told my class that if we didn't remember.... something or other... we'd be literally throwing marks down the drain. There was a guy in the class called Mark.

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, February 20, 2006 8:35 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Blimey! Search Enjinn's improved!

my teacher told us that if we didn't do X in the exam, we'd literally be throwing marks down the drain.

This is liberal schooling gone too far

especially when they've gone Euro

Popjustice says that the new Britney single is "literally quite good."

I've literally never heard anyone criticise this misuse before. I've literally said literally like this on purpose so many times that I literally sometimes use it in the wrong context on purpose. It's literally a pain in the face.

I meant to document this last week, but on CNN last Friday before the presidential debate, some commentator said that John McCain is going to have to literally reach out of the television and embrace the Americans watching the debate.

Man, that was a close one.

I seriously don't know if I could've literally held my shit together if a thing like that happened.

i hate it when words are literally misused, hehe

Joe Biden uses this literally--and I mean literally--every day.

I just misused "literally" in a way that gave me pause. Some old friend popped up on Facebook, like they do, and her status message was about being in the Air Force and doing all kinds of strength training and loads of push ups and such, and I said something dumb like, "Yeah! You were always made to kick ass, and now you can do it literally."

What I meant, of course, was that now she is physically strong in addition to being super cool. But literally doesn't mean one less level of figurative speech down from where you began, it means word-for-word. To literally kick ass, there must be an ass, and someone must be driving their foot into it with great force.

I feel stupid for employing one of my own linguistic pet peeves.

I guess wasn't a step down in how figurative the speech was. More of a lateral move.

"The Whig Party literally fell apart during the 1850's"

See, there's another borderline case. It's not a flat-out misuse of the word as much as it's an abuse of it, sticking it unnecessarily into a sentence as an intensifier. The sentence is fine without it.

maybe if she was a paratrooper she would be literally kicking ass ... but then I don't know all that much about the different branches of the military and whether anyone in the Air Force would be given training in hand to hand combat, or be in a position where they would employ those skills in the field.

Doesn't much matter, I don't think, unless I was trying to refer specifically to glutes and the kicking thereof.

it's not as egregious a misuse as if she were a legal secretary ...

Of course not, but that's exactly what bugs me about it. The thought will come through with its intended meaning, I'm sure, but it will still have a word in it that's totally wrong. I should have said "physically" instead, because it's what I meant.

Hey, if I don't edit my Facebook replies, who will?

well, I suppose if you posted your name and password on ilx, some ilxor might do so for the entertainment value ...

Oh, that'd be a hoot and a half.

would it literally be, though?

HOOOOOOT! Hoo.

That half a hoot really undermines any previous hooting.

"The Whig Party literally fell apart during the 1850's"

See, there's another borderline case. It's not a flat-out misuse of the word as much as it's an abuse of it, sticking it unnecessarily into a sentence as an intensifier. The sentence is fine without it.

― (I'm white, btw.) (kenan), Friday, July 24, 2009 2:50 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark

No, this is not a borderline case. It is a flat-out misuse. The Whig Party did not "literally" fall apart. "Fall apart" is per se a metaphor when talking about anything that does not physically fall apart, hence not literal. Unless maybe the Whig party was all gathered on a ship and all fell off different sides of it.

When metaphors come, they come not single spies, but in battalions

ppl who care about other ppl misusing this word are fukken soulless

like literally soulless

eggxactly theyre fukken aberrations

To say that a thing "fell apart" meaning it decentralized, lost all organization, and scatterd is a level of abstraction I an willing to accept as very close to reality. yrmv.

this literally drives me up the wall when people do this

que voulez vous

http://www.chrisgenoa.com/archives/ex3lady2.jpg

wait, that's literally the ceiling

my bad

this literally drives me up the wall when people do this

Tell me is something eluding you, sunshine?
Is this not what you expected to see?

anyway guys, how do you know these people aren't just using the word 'littorally' in a non-literal manner

I for one am a big fan of clicking the litoris.

"We really can't afford, literally, to be locking people up unnecessarily, ineffectually and so pointlessly. More on less would be a saner approach," he says.

maybe they literally can't afford it? prison costs are spiralling.

yeah what is wrong with that?

i mean there is literally nothing wrong with it

Their policy of locking people up ineffectually might need looking at. Bigger locks guys.

literally can't afford bigger locks, that's the problem.

literally bigger locks are expensive
http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:W6HiNodAoWqerM:http://lh5.ggpht.com/_u1pYVqsbTG0/RvPBtZbgYDI/AAAAAAAABWM/rgUR9uj5MDg/DelhiDarshan%2B051.jpg

Just get smaller prisoners?

Children come cheap innit