{"id":142,"date":"2003-05-29T20:53:56","date_gmt":"2003-05-30T04:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/05\/29\/beside-myself-with-anger-but-not-literally-so\/"},"modified":"2003-05-29T20:53:56","modified_gmt":"2003-05-30T04:53:56","slug":"beside-myself-with-anger-but-not-literally-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=142","title":{"rendered":"Beside myself with anger, but not literally so"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most folks have some “word peeves” – some common use of language that irritates them to no end. What I can’t abide is the word “literally” used to mean “figuratively,” as in “I was literally beside myself in anger.”<\/p>\n

What I didn’t realize until recently is that this language atrocity is nothing new; I’m just one of a long line of folks who have been annoyed by “misuse” of literally for generations (literally!). From dictionary.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Usage Note<\/b>: 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.<\/i>” 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<\/i>, where no contrast with the figurative sense of the words is intended.<\/div>\n

So although I will continue to be annoyed by hearing “literally” used as an intensifier, I cannot claim it’s proof that the English language is being degraded. The language isn’t degrading; it came out of the box this way..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most folks have some “word peeves” – some common use of language that irritates them to no end. What I can’t abide is the word “literally” used to mean “figuratively,” as in “I was literally beside myself in anger.” What … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind-blowing-miscellania-and-other-neat-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}