Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Randomly Noted Help fight illiteralcy
Posted by Russell McLendon on Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 2:41 PM
Oh really? Your feet are literally killing you? And you're literally freezing your ass off? If you think I'm literally splitting hairs, you should visit Literally, A Web Log, an Atlanta-based blog tracking abuse of the word "literally." It's updated irregularly, since much of the fumbling of this once-useful word occurs in unrecorded conversations among idiots, but it's important work these bloggers are doing. Creative use of language is great and necessary, since language has to evolve for society to evolve -- old words develop more nuance and new words solidify from slang. But if you ignore an established word's unique meaning and just use it for generic emphasis like you would "very" or "really," you're diluting our collective definition of it and weakening the precision of our language. And you just sound like a jackass, as in the case of this woman.
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