are you literally going to read this?

"Such abuses have a long and esteemed history in English."

Here's a fascinating history on the use of "literally" by Jesse Sheidlower at NPR. Seems people are complaining about the use of the word literally when actually speaking figuratively.

But people have been saying what they don't mean for ages. For example, as Mr. Sheidlower points out there are literally such things as contranyms. "Dust" is one. Contranyms are words that are used in seemingly contradictory ways. Dust can mean either to remove dust or to sprinkle dust.

"And why don't we also complain about using the word
really to refer to things that aren't real?"

Yeah! What he said.

Hey, I don't really care either way. As long as you don't use "impact" as a verb on my blog, we'll be just fine.


(this post written with writely).