Dear Internet,
Please cease your use of the word literally. If you "literally died when [you] found out...", you would not be able to write about it in your "blog".
That is all.
If you told me that your server fell over, I'd think you meant that it was very slow, or crashed. If you told me that your server literally fell over, then I'd ask if someone tripped over a cable, or there was an earthquake.
Re:Literally
chromatic on 2003-12-23T07:11:28
This is the Internet; my hope of people using words correctly (or, at least, incorrectly with panache) grows ever dim.
Re:Literally
rooneg on 2003-12-23T12:39:35
Look on the bright side, at least they're actually spelling the word out, as opposed to using some screwed up abbreviation. If I see one more person use 'r' and 'u' as words, I'm going to go completely insane.Re:Literally
wnodom on 2003-12-23T15:41:27
... I'm going to go completely insane. Literally?
Re:Literally
hfb on 2003-12-23T19:52:36
You read/. ...You're either a hopeless sap or just in the death throes of consigning yourself to the grim reality that people really do watch TV instead of reading anymore. You would like John McWorter's new book, "Doing our own Thing", I suspect. John McWhorter
TorgoX on 2003-12-23T21:06:16
When I was visiting Cornell to check them out for grad school in linguistics, there was exactly one person there who appeared even half-sane or even half-human. It was this one black guy who studied creoles, and I exchanged just a few words with him before I was whisked off to meet some doofus. I later found it that 1) It was John McWhorter, and 2) He was packing up his office to leave Cornell, thus displaying the same judgement I had of the place.
So, they're supposed to meet, but then keep driving another mile? Huh?
Yes, they've taken my nice "literally", and made it mean "emphatically".
Of course, these are likely the same people who took "bi-partisan" to make it mean "non-partisan". It used to mean that people were really split on an issue, and there's no hope of compromise. Now it means that that the big two parties (nevermind the minor parties) have kissed ass enough to have a compromise coming down the center aisle (literally {grin}). And you won't hear anyone use "non-partisan" in any recent statements. {sigh}
Re:why bother making me type in a whole new subjec
hex on 2003-12-23T16:06:16
Or indeed Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
It's almost always used to mean almost exactly the opposite of it's real meaning. I see it used most often for "poorly thought out", "unfounded" or "foolish", when in fact it means "plausable, but flawed" or "deceptively attractive".
It's such a wonderful word that wraps up a whole paragraph of meaning in a single word. I expect that people will continue to use it wrongly until someday the dictionary writers give up and add one of those other meaning to the dictionary and it'll be all over, the word will mean something subtle and something obvious and nobody will know which one you are saying. After that day, we'll have to use second-best, in this context, words like socratic or pretentious, or write that paragraph to say what we mean. Bah!
Re:The word I hate to see abused is...
boo_radley on 2003-12-23T18:42:41
My pet peeve is the corporate misuse of the word "grow" to mean "increase". Drives me crazy.Re:The word I hate to see abused is...
jordan on 2003-12-23T19:17:20
Yeah, people who say "grow the business" should be empowered to spend all their time at home away from real work.
The mega-corp I work for started using the word "frontlog" (don't run for your dictionary, I don't believe it's in there) awhile back. Makes me want to vomit. It's like backlog, but you don't really have signed contracts for it yet. It's exactly the same a "prospective sales", but I guess that sounds too indefinite. Backlog is a really good thing to have and I guess frontlog is just a little different in the pea-brains of these corporate speaksters.
Fortunately, after several reorganizations and a merger, they seem to have stopped using that particular term.
