Piobaireachd
08-08-2007, 04:56 PM
The overuse of a misused word...
<table align="center" bgcolor="#ffffff" border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" width="601"><tbody><tr><td align="right" valign="top" width="5%">ADVERB:</td><td valign="top">1. In a literal manner; word for word: translated the Greek passage literally. 2. In a literal or strict sense: Don't take my remarks literally. 3. Usage Problem a. Really; actually: “There are people in the world who literally do not know how to boil water” (Craig Claiborne). b. Used as an intensive before a figurative expression. </td></tr><tr><td align="right" valign="top" width="5%">USAGE NOTE:</td><td valign="top"> For more than a hundred years, critics have remarked on the incoherency of using literally in a way that suggests the exact opposite of its primary sense of “in a manner that accords with the literal sense of the words.” In 1926, for example, H.W. Fowler cited the example “The 300,000 Unionists … will be literally thrown to the wolves.” The practice does not stem from a change in the meaning of literally itself—if it did, the word would long since have come to mean “virtually” or “figuratively”—but from a natural tendency to use the word as a general intensive, as in They had literally no help from the government on the project, where no contrast with the figurative sense of the words is intended.</td></tr></tbody></table>
<table align="center" bgcolor="#ffffff" border="0" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="3" width="601"><tbody><tr><td align="right" valign="top" width="5%">ADVERB:</td><td valign="top">1. In a literal manner; word for word: translated the Greek passage literally. 2. In a literal or strict sense: Don't take my remarks literally. 3. Usage Problem a. Really; actually: “There are people in the world who literally do not know how to boil water” (Craig Claiborne). b. Used as an intensive before a figurative expression. </td></tr><tr><td align="right" valign="top" width="5%">USAGE NOTE:</td><td valign="top"> For more than a hundred years, critics have remarked on the incoherency of using literally in a way that suggests the exact opposite of its primary sense of “in a manner that accords with the literal sense of the words.” In 1926, for example, H.W. Fowler cited the example “The 300,000 Unionists … will be literally thrown to the wolves.” The practice does not stem from a change in the meaning of literally itself—if it did, the word would long since have come to mean “virtually” or “figuratively”—but from a natural tendency to use the word as a general intensive, as in They had literally no help from the government on the project, where no contrast with the figurative sense of the words is intended.</td></tr></tbody></table>