
According to the dictionary, “literally” now also means “figuratively” - sampo
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/22/according_to_the_dictionary_literally_now_also_means_figuratively_newscred/
======
tty
>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.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002611.html)

~~~
gabemart
>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
>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
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.

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adwf
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
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
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
Nonsense, the dictionary says it was used correctly:

[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thusly](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/thusly)

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sixbrx
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.

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return0
Obligatory Oatmeal:
[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally)

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tomp
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
> 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/

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JoshTriplett
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.

~~~
anonymous
> 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.

There isn't. At least not in any objectively recognisable way. You (and I mean
you specifically) can obviously look at a new use and say "this is a new
meaning" or "no, this is an error", but that's a subjective judgement and
others would think otherwise. It is as impossible as being given a copy of a
movie and being asked, by only inspecting the movie, to tell if this was
copied from a legal DVD or downloaded from a torrent.

Just look at the verb "to troll (on an internet forum)". It comes from the
practise of trolling in fishing, where you tie a bait to a cord and drive your
boat around, drawing the bait through the water and waiting for some fish to
take it. A lot of people, however, connect it with the race Troll, thinking of
it as the practise of a big, nasty creature coming out from under and
bothering people. That's not helped by calling the people who do it "trolls".
Was the original, fishing term wrong? Was the person who coined the name Troll
for a race of fantasy creatures wrong? Were the people who connected trolling
with Trolls and subsequently called trolls "trolls" wrong? For bonus points:
if two words are written the same and pronounced the same, can they be
different words, or are all their meanings different meanings of the same
word?

~~~
JoshTriplett
> You (and I mean you specifically) can obviously look at a new use and say
> "this is a new meaning" or "no, this is an error", but that's a subjective
> judgement and others would think otherwise.

Hence me talking about "widespread". If the consensus of the vast majority of
people says that a usage is incorrect, then a helpful dictionary should
properly document that that usage will be perceived as incorrect. Writing
"there" when you mean "their" or "they're" usually produces a sentence that
can be understood in context (our language parsers are remarkably resilient),
but will make the writer look like they either don't know or don't care, and
will create a strong negative impression in those who read it.

Dictionaries should document widespread usages, even incorrect ones.
Dictionaries often attach information to meanings like "archaic" or
"frequently misused as" or "frequently confused with".

For example, a dictionary can and should add a note to "their" saying
"frequently confused with they're and there". There's absolutely nothing wrong
with that. But as long as the vast majority of people consider sentences like
"there sentence structure needed some work" incorrect, a dictionary should not
claim that "there" is a possessive pronoun without attaching the caveat that
anyone reading it will consider it incorrect.

(This response applies to several replies.)

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danso
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/)

~~~
James_Duval
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.

~~~
dragonwriter
> 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.

Even better, it is _impossible to confuse_ with the "proper" usage (because it
is distinct syntactically) _and_ makes the "proper" usage more transparent and
easier to understand.

The everyday form is transitive, its always " _< foo>_ raises the question _<
bar>_" and means "Accepting _< foo>_ creates the need for a resolution of the
issue _< bar>_".

The "proper" form is intransitive, its always simply " _< foo>_ raises the
question", meaning " _< foo>_ invokes the _petitio principii_ fallacy". This
can be rephrased, however, as " _< foo>_ creates the need for a resolution of
the issue _< bar>_" where _< bar>_ is the proposition argument _< foo>_ was
offered to justify, as it is stating that the argument depends on the
conclusion it was offered to support.

------
Elrac
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.

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xefer
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.

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dragonwriter
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.

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twelvechairs
"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"

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namenotrequired
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".

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DennisP
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.

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jaekwon
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.

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od2m
Flammable equals Inflammable? What a country!

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InclinedPlane
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
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.

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lutusp
I popularized this issue a few years ago:

[http://arachnoid.com/wrong/#Dictionary](http://arachnoid.com/wrong/#Dictionary)

Now it's suddenly "big news".

