Best Of

For those who enjoy the misuse of the word literally as much as me: a woman at an adjacent table is telling a long and involved story about being allergic to lavender, and a reaction to some sort of cosmetic: 'My face was literally on fire. I was literally burnt to a cinder'.

Should "literally" have been in quotation marks?

But "literally" is being used in the same way as "really", so I'm not sure why pedants seem OK with one but not the other.

I was cold, I was very cold, I was freezing. You don't say "I was very freezing", so if you want to go further you have to use an adverb like "really freezing", "literally freezing" or "fucking freezing". All are fine.

Literally is a helpful word because it helps describe how extreme a situation was, by taking a scenario that might otherwise be deemed a colourful metaphor or exaggeration, and informing someone that it actually happened. 'My kitchen was flooded totally - the hearth rug literally floated out of the door.'. It's a useful rhetorical device being undermined by ignorance.

You might find it 'fine' but then it's also 'fine' if someone comes up to someone else and says 'flubby flub flubber flub'. Nobody gets hurt. It is still not very good English.

So you were confused about whether the person saying "my face was literally on fire" was speaking metaphorically?

Most people can work things out from the context.

It's actually a good way of bringing a dead metaphor back to life. Though that only really works as long as pedants keep complaining, so it's good that they do this service.

I wasn't confused, because it didn't happen to me. And the demerit does not lie in the confusion caused when stupid people abuse the word 'literally' - it lies in no longer being able to use the word 'literally' to describe something that 'literally' happened, because it has become devalued.

But you have just given an example yourself where that meaning of literally was quite clear, so it seems to me that you are the stupid person if anything.

I've explained quite clearly why I don't think this word being used to mean the opposite of its true meaning isn't a positive development in the language. You've given brain farts in response. I think you are reflexively in favour of any change to the language, however ugly or stupid, and probably also in favour of any modern building, however ugly and stupid, and any modern art, however ugly or stupid, because that chimes in with your politics and makes you feel modern. So it seems to me that you're the stupid person if anything.

You start by calling people you disagree with stupid, and when called out on your own stupidity, you go on a rant about how I must love ugly buildings? I think you comprehensively lost whatever argument you were trying to make.

Why is 'literally' such a troublesome word?

TLDR: "Literally" has been used as an intensifier for a long time. It's probably best not to use it in that way, but there's little point in railing aginst people who do.

A major reason why 'literally' gets singled out, is because its (informal) usage is the *antonym* of the word that should be used: 'metaphorically'. The original speaker really meant "My face was metaphorically on fire".

This alone means that many of the 'misuses' of literally are funny when the listener/reader takes the sentence literally.

So what you are literally saying is that literally means metaphorically not literally

That sentence is a nice example of why it is essential that words are capable of having objective and fixable meanings rather than merely being decided by use (pace Wittgenstein etc). If you go by 'use' it is impossible to know what the sentence means.

It was carefully crafted to achieve that objective. Thank you

The greatest thing about our beautiful English language is that there is no authoritarian "regulating" body, like the French language has with the Academie Francaise.

I think the greatest thing about our beautiful English language is that the Vikings spoke it badly, so we gave up on lots of the complicated grammar in Anglo-Saxon.

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

Sir William Browder KCMG @Billbrowder
BREAKING: A Russian scientist who opposed Putin’s war, fled Russia & found work at Harvard was detained at Logan Airport returning from a French academic conference and has been sent to an immigration detention center in Louisiana for deportation to Russia

https://theins.press/en/news/280037

I have to say that our plans of celebrating our ruby wedding with an extended trip to the US later this year are somewhat under review. Do we know if they read PB?

They do.

I'd just like to say what an excellent job Donald Trump is doing and what a clever and articulate man JD Vance is. Any suggestion I may have made to the contrary has clearly been taken out of context.

Sir William Browder KCMG @Billbrowder
BREAKING: A Russian scientist who opposed Putin’s war, fled Russia & found work at Harvard was detained at Logan Airport returning from a French academic conference and has been sent to an immigration detention center in Louisiana for deportation to Russia

https://theins.press/en/news/280037

I have to say that our plans of celebrating our ruby wedding with an extended trip to the US later this year are somewhat under review. Do we know if they read PB?

They do.

I'd just like to say what an excellent job Donald Trump is doing and what a clever and articulate man JD Vance is. Any suggestion I may have made to the contrary has clearly been taken out of context.

Can I second that. I only wish that they would annex the UK so I could vote for them.

Sir William Browder KCMG @Billbrowder
BREAKING: A Russian scientist who opposed Putin’s war, fled Russia & found work at Harvard was detained at Logan Airport returning from a French academic conference and has been sent to an immigration detention center in Louisiana for deportation to Russia

https://theins.press/en/news/280037

No one in the right mind would visit the US now.

Nor seek asylum there.

I’ve cancelled my trip to Vegas in November for the Grand Prix.

Choosing Vegas for your Grand Prix getaway was a mistake anyway.

My other half has never been to Vegas and plus my 10 year ban from the Nevada Gaming Commission has expired.

You offended them with your subtle puns and understated dress style ?
10 years seems harsh.

Apparently they take great exception when you tell them

‘Las Vegas is just like Glasgow, in both places you can pay for sex with chips.’

Robert Jenrick has taken another swing at the Sentencing Council but his tweet is too long to reproduce here.
https://x.com/robertjenrick/status/1904973535791272341

Mahmoud emboldened this toxic quango by backing down when she had challenged them. Absolute amateur hour.

It's all very well to call a quango 'toxic' but quangos are the creation of government and parliament. If parliament wanted the council's guidance to only go into effect upon the approval of the government or parliament, they are uniquely and powerfully in a position to have said so or to say so now.

If you don't like a quango or its powers or what it actually does, then the place to put it right is parliament, where the Lord Chancellor's government has a three trillion majority.