- Joined
- Feb 10, 2014
- Messages
- 5,278
- Name
- Dave
I have a little Grammar Nazi inside of me, as many of us do. It doesn't come out much on here (although I do get my hackles up when someone says could of, should of or would of when they mean have instead of of.)
Another of my little pet peeves is what I thought until recently was misuse of the word literal or literally. I had always been taught that literally should only be used when something was literally true and not to express emphasis of a metaphor.
But apparently, a definition has been added to the word by dictionaries to now make it proper to use it as emphasis for a metaphor. As an example, here's the 4th definition of the word from dictionary.com:
in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually:
I literally died when she walked out on stage in that costume.
It's actually pretty interesting to me... it's almost the only case I've known of where a word's definition was altered to mean the exact opposite of what it should mean. The only other case I know of is "bad" meaning "good" in 80's slang, but this really isn't a case of slang.
Another of my little pet peeves is what I thought until recently was misuse of the word literal or literally. I had always been taught that literally should only be used when something was literally true and not to express emphasis of a metaphor.
But apparently, a definition has been added to the word by dictionaries to now make it proper to use it as emphasis for a metaphor. As an example, here's the 4th definition of the word from dictionary.com:
in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually:
I literally died when she walked out on stage in that costume.
It's actually pretty interesting to me... it's almost the only case I've known of where a word's definition was altered to mean the exact opposite of what it should mean. The only other case I know of is "bad" meaning "good" in 80's slang, but this really isn't a case of slang.
