While we're at it, literally doesn't belong on it. Literally has exactly one meaning. Unsurprisingly, the wrong meaning is the opposite of the right one.
Still think this list would help every struggling learner of English.
As I said elsewhere, when someone says "I've been waiting for days" and it's actually been minutes, we don't say "days sometimes means minutes". We say they were exaggerating for effect. It's a different use of the same meaning.
I think it's the same for "literally". Hyperbolic use of the original meaning. If "literally" meant "figuratively" we would expect to see sentences that would be interpreted as literal but for the inclusion of "literally", and I don't think I have ever seen one.
> You may be interested in linguistic descriptivism, as opposed to linguistic prescriptivism:
So are you prescribing to me that I must accept "figuratively" as a valid definition for "literally"?
My take is that language is a democratic activity. I never voted for the people who decided "they" must always be plural, and could never stand-in for a third-person singular of unknown gender. I think that use is simple, sensible, and solves a genuine problem in the language; every time I use "they" in the third-person-singular, I "vote" for that to be an acceptable use case.
On the other hand, the only reason to use the word "literally" is to say that this thing actually happened. That is the meaning of the word. Using it to mean "figuratively" doesn't fix a missing hole in the language; on the contrary, it opens up a hole, because low you don't know if the thing actually happened, or if the guy is just using the word "literally" to mean the opposite of "literally". If we just give up, and start saying "actually" instead of "literally", then eventually the same linguistic process will corrupt "actually", and all other variations, as well.
People who use the word "literally" as an intensifier are casting their vote for how to use the language. When I make fun of those people, I'm casting my vote, that I don't like their usage. I will continue to do so, and argue with anyone who disagrees with me, as long as it's practical to do so.
> So are you prescribing to me that I must accept "figuratively" as a valid definition for "literally"?
No, they are describing the fact that it is used that way, whether you like it or not.
That said, while I totally accept the usage, and don't have a problem with people saying "I literally died laughing" (because the phrase "I died laughing" is already on the face of it a statement of fact, and yet we have no problem understanding that it's figurative, so any modifiers -- I seriously died laughing, I totally died laughing -- are just intensifying the hyperbole), I personally don't think it should have been added to the dictionary.
People already use intensifiers when being hyperbolic (as above, "I seriously died laughing," "I totally died laughing"), we don't need to add to the definition of all of them. It's a valid part of the constellation of "intensifier + idiom," and each intensifier doesn't need to be singled out.
"Died" is already an intensifier -- and a pretty extreme one. But because of overuse, it's become meaningless; and so now people feel like they have to add more intensifiers: "seriously", "totally", "literally", etc. Eventually all those will be so overused that they become meaningless too.
I think saying "I died laughing" is a fine idiom. But the continual slipping into "cranking up the volume", and having more and more words mean nothing, is bad for the language. So, I vote to oppose this.
You have a vote too. Think about the way you want the language to be, and then vote by using it that way, and / or arguing with people who use it the way you don't like.
I actually have a strong memory of being about 4 or 5 (before I would have heard the phrase), and laughing at a joke my dad told so hard that I couldn't breathe for a moment, and then being genuinely furious at him, telling him "I could have died!"
I've seen the phrase "busy to death" ("忙死了"), and "missed you to death" ("念死了"), so I think Chinese are just more prone to die of extreme emotions. ;-)
It seems like a lost battle.
If a person you don't know well uses literally, you already cannot know without context if they mean figuratively if the fact being qualified is remotely plausible. It's broken beyond repair. No hope for healing. Literally is no more. It's passed on. It has ceased to be. It's expired and has gone to see its maker. It's an ex-word.
However, he may not be interested in talking to (or hiring) people who misuse a word and claim that the correct use is a matter of perspective.
We can be descriptive in saying that people use "literally" when they don't mean "literally" - we can also be descriptive when we label such people as ignorant of the meaning of the words they use.
> he may not be interested in talking to (or hiring) people who misuse a word and claim that the correct use is a matter of perspective.
Because that would be the worst. No one ever says something while meaning something else.
When, while sitting at the table, people ask me if I can pass them the water, I check if I can reach the bottle, I check if I'm close enough to them, then I say "yes, I can" and keep eating.
My brother did something similar growing up. In Swedish a common way to ask the time is "Vad är klockan?", literally translating to "What is the watch?". To which I got "An invention that tells the time" or some variation thereof for years...
I wonder how many languages' time-telling questions could be susceptible of a different literal interpretation.
It seems like the Spanish and Portuguese could be literally taken as "what are hours?" ("intervals of sixty minutes!") (although I don't think it would be the most idiomatic way to ask that question in either language), while one German option is "how late is it?" ("not very!").
There's another German question which could be taken as "how much clock is it?", but since clocks are usually discrete objects, it might be quite a strain to try to take this as a question about something's clock-nature. (Maybe if you were looking at Dalí's Persistence of Memory, you could answer something like "this one is not very much clock".)
That's not descriptive, that's presumptuous and elitist. How do you know they're ignorant? Maybe they know perfectly well what the word means and are using it for humorous effect, or as an extreme intensifier.
That kinda depends on how you define things though. literally in the sense of something that actually happened is clearly the meaning of the word. You can then debate on whether literally as in figuratively would be a separate meaning for the same word, or just hyperbole.
The "figuratively" sense is just bog-standard hyperbole. Do you also object to "killed" in the sense of a stand-up comedian getting a lot of laughter during their act? Or "I just died of embarrassment!"?
It's not hyperbole. When you say something was "so funny I died", that's exactly what 'figurative' means. I don't object to the use of the facetious/sarcastic/exaggerating use of 'literally', but when used in that way, people are literally (sorry!) being figurative. I think the problem arises when something in speech starts out being sarcastic or out of proportion consciously, but gets used so much that people forget this and start changing the actual meaning of the words being used. I think it often comes about because terms and phrases get re-used by people who don't actually understand them... like a small child repeating a pun or quip they've heard an adult use, but don't really understand, and then they grow up using some part of speech incorrectly.
Include me among those who find it frustrating, but the meanings of words are more or less acquired by convention, and I think my side has been outvoted on this one.
I remember trying to explain this to a friend once, but was having a 'senior moment' and couldn't remember the word 'figuratively' to explain what 'literally' should have been in the context. Now it is used as an intensifier, but it seems to be 'sarcastic' when used in that way... there's some understanding that exaggeration is being used, and that the use of the word 'literal' isn't entirely correct.
It might be more precise to call it hyperbole than sarcasm. But either is pretty reasonable. Both are rhetorical devices that hinge on creating an effect by intentionally using a word differently than its normal, plain meaning.
Incidentally, I think one reason people get irritated by this is that some people prefer communication to be direct, unambiguous, and straightforward without relying on a lot of subtlety, context, guessing, or interpretation. I'd bet that programmers and other technically-minded people lean this direction more. So when people complain that this sort of thing is a violation of the rules, I think on some level they know that's not true, so I'm inclined to interpret it more like a plea or protest to avoid this style of indirect communication.
Still think this list would help every struggling learner of English.