this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
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It is hyperbole, but the problem is that it's using a word that was supposed to specify that something was not hyperbole as hyperbole, rendering it useless.
... Or... Because it's a word specifically meant to indicate it is not hyperbolic, using it in that way is literally the superlative hyperbole.
At the cost of the word's intended use, unfortunately. RIP literally. It literally died.
Now you have to hit literally in the chest with an adrenaline shot to bring lividity into its decaying body.
quite literally
actually literally
A good point, I haven't seen "quite literally" used to mean "figuratively." Perhaps there's some usefulness to be had yet.
Another example of hyperbole.
Okay, rendering it far less useful.
People, including many famous authors, have been using literally this way for hundreds of years.
Yes, but its use to mean its opposite didn't become widespread until the past decade or so.
People have been complaining about it longer than a decade, so you're way off there.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally
Tldr: common use in the "figurative" sense for since the 1800s.
Incorrect. People have been using it the way you are complaining about for hundreds of years. It’s a new phenomenon that people complain about it being used the way you disapprove of. I’d attribute the recent complaints to lack of literary exposure and anti intellectualism in recent years.
Except some of the earliest uses of the word "literally" that didn't pertain to letters and glyps we in the form of hyperbole.
Literal as factual and literal as exaggeration both about the same age and precedent, and have been used long enough that it's just part of the English language at this point.
May as well complain about how "discreet" and "indiscreet" are opposites, but "flammable" and "inflammable" are the same.
https://people.sc.fsu.edu/~jburkardt/fun/wordplay/autoanto.html
English is a language of contradictions and massively confusing syntax. News at 11.