Since it’s widely accepted that the word “literally” can be used to add emphasis, we need another word that can be used when you want to make it clear that you really mean “literally” in the original sense.
iliterally
Once I found out that that the definition of literally has literally been changed to “literally, but sometimes figuratively”, I’ve switched to objectively and subjectively when describing things, which aren’t quite the same but I literally don’t have a word anymore that means literally.
So instead of literally you could use objectively. I like that no one is going to use objectively as slang because it’s kind of a clunky, obtuse word that doesn’t literally roll off the tongue.
People already are using objectively the same way as literally.
No cap
Yes, that’s why it bothers me that word “literally” is used for emphasis. I don’t care how long it’s been used that way, it robs the word of utility. The whole point of the word was to clarify that you mean literally when your words might otherwise be interpreted as figurative. Shit like this is why I’m unsure if people around me understand that I’m not exaggerating about the Untied States becoming a legitimate dictatorship committing holocaust level atrocities. I don’t know how to communicate when I mean something literally and be sure people understand that I mean it literally and am not exaggerating
The word has been enshitified.
Trying to proscribe a particular usage is a doomed effort. You may as well literally command the tides to turn back. You’re really tilting at windmills. It’s seriously like mocking a clown. It’s exponentially harder than…
no, wait, we can still save “exponentially”! It doesn’t just mean a lot! It has important properties that differentiate it from linear or polynomial systems that make predicting outcomes-
small, linguistic drowning noises
I think the lesson to learn here is that it is easier to kill a word by adding a new meaning than by policing how other people use it.
Eradicating a colloquial definition is like eradicating a virus, except anyone can crack open an old book at any time and revive it with their mind. I’m sure there are some meanings that have truly died i.e. there are no surviving records of them on earth, but they sure seem resilient. That’s before considering that the circumstances that give rise to one meaning might easily reoccur and cause the same meaning to rise again, perhaps under a new name. Sort of a convergent evolution for words, if you will.
I think the best we can hope to do is nudge words into more useful meanings, and create new words when our old words get overloaded.
rational used to just mean "possible to express as a ratio before it got co-opted by the academic-industrial complex- "
Hmmm… when you say “academic” do you mean the Academy of ancient Greece? Because I’m guessing that’s around when that mix-up first happened.
Now that I think about it I’m less sure that it was such a mistake. A rational number is one that can be expressed as a fraction, so the full number is expressible (vs irrational numbers which can only be approximated or represented as symbols, like PI. I think). If an idea is “rational”, then the whole idea (all the antecedents and the conclusion) is expressible in a logical system, whereas an “irrational” idea can’t be expressed as a logical structure. I think “rational” as a shorthand for “has a finite logical definition” is pretty reasonable.
I just looked it up, and according to wikipedia I have it backwards, the number groups were named “rational” and “irrational” according to whether they were sayable or unsayable, which makes sense. Though one of the references in that section is just to… a guy on stackexchange paraphrasing what he read in the OED, so not sure I’m buying that page 100%. More research is needed.
Thanks for the support, fellow windmill tilter.
In truth, I just came to accept that change is inevitable. Now I got my phonetic floaties, my reading goggles, and a literal (middle english definition) inner tube, and I just see where the current takes me.
Exactly
Nah, we already have one.
Just because idiots misuse it…
“Exactly”. “Truly”. “Literally, in the traditional sense not the post modern sense where it means emphatically or figuratively”
The word is “acshully”
I’ve been using “genuinely” more and more in place of “literally” when I want to be, well, literal.
“widely accepted”
Yeah, no. People who use it incorrectly simply don’t understand language or meaning. Just because there’s a lot of people who misuse the word doesn’t mean it’s widely accepted. A lot of people believe in a god, doesn’t make it true.
Thats not how language works
Yes it is. Language and meaning don’t simply change in 10-20 years unless forced upon (such as a conqueror forcing culture). Neologisms are a thing, and that’s fine (though I would argue “bling” is a garbage word :) ), but using “literally” to mean “not literally” is redefining the whole purpose of the word in such a short context of time simply because of ignorance. Therefore, I assert what I argued already – it’s not widely accepted – just widely misused.
The misuse of language is literally one of the primary ways language evolves
Language and meaning don’t simply change in 10-20 years unless forced upon.
As the kids say: fam this is dumb af.
Languages change all the time, kids practically make it their duty to introduce new words. “Bad” words become fine, others become real curse words you can’t say without being branded a pos.
Also literally has had the double meaning since 1700
Best that I can do is, “non-figuratively.” As in, “The power of the hurricane winds non-figuratively blew me away.”
That non-figuratively rolls right off the tongue :D
In German we have multiple different words that mean “literally”, not all of which can be used for emphasis. There are the phrases “im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes” (“in the truest sense of the word”) as well as “etwas wörtlich nehmen” (“to take something literally”), both of which are usually not used for emphasis, presumably also because they don’t nearly fit into the grammatical construction of a sentence in a way that would produce emphasis. Then there is “buchstäblich” (roughly “letterish”), which means the same thing as literally and can be used in both ways, as it’s an adverb. But then there is “wortwörtlich” (roughly “word-wordly”), which is also an adverb and grammatically fits into the same position, but I’ve never heard it being used for emphasis.
Language is weird.
I’m fine with descriptivism on theory, but it sure seems wrong in the cases where the word changes meaning due to people misunderstanding/misusing the word. That’s not a a word gaining a new meaning, it’s losing meaning.
The other one I need a replacement for is “begs the question” since so many people have misused that one too.
Words that mean “in fact” have been turning into “for emphasis” for literally a really very long time.
Edit: really means “in reality”, and very means “in truth”.
If we come up with something in this thread, I’ll be here to corrupt its meaning by misusing it.
Why? Does fungus need a reason to give you jock itch?
