Misuse of 'literally'

[DouzeQuinze]

It is so annoying!!!

Heard today - "The weight of the world has literally been lifted from my shoulders"...

There have been many instances recently and it really grates on me! Anyone else?!

I'll tell you what annoys ME with TV chefs - the way they make up their own prepositional verbs to exaggerate their own importance! Typically with "off". "I'm just going to fry this off in a little bit of butter, then quite literally just roast off a few potatoes to go on the side." What on EARTH is that word "off" adding, you buffoon?

"analogies that don't work"? I merely gave some other examples of progressive verb forms - in English this uses the verb to be (in whichever tense is required) with the present participle (-ing form), not the past participle (-ed form or in the case of the irregular verb to sit, sat). This has nothing to do with whether movement is involved. Not quite an argument on a whim.

Have to say I have my doubts as to whether the phrase "I was sat" came from the French, as IME it is a relatively recent introduction to the language, however I have googled and can't find any evidence for or against.

I would accept though, that it is in widespread usage and to say it is incorrect was a little heavy handed.

Oh yes, MIFLAW - I'd forgotten quite how random the "literally" can be ... "literally roast these off" that's so Jamie Oliver !

MIFLAW - never mind that - how about adding unnecessary nouns to quite ordinary dishes to make them sound fancy.

Oh no, I could never eat the fried chicken, not now I've tried the organic pan fried chicken.

Well how the hell else does one fry a chicken? In one's hand? I mean, really.

I have that conversation every Saturday Kitchen! Have decided that 'pan' means 'totally', as in I totally fried, y'know, like pan-global or pan-American!

Winkle

When I said "argument on a whim" I actually meant the 17th century grammarians who (for example) unilaterally decided that an infinitve could not be split - not you! Sorry for any confusion.

But I'm afraid I stand by my other point - meaning is as important as grammar and walk, for example, cannot really be transitive without changing the meaning; whereas "sit" is sort of a three-way verb, being at once intransitive ("the book sat on the shelf for many years") transitive ("I sat my uncle next to my aunt and moved off") and implicitly reflexive ("I sat (myself) down in the corner.") I personally think that, when someone uses "I was sat in the corner" it is on the understanding that it is reflexive (who was seated? I was. Who seated me? I did) rather than a non-existent (and therefore nonsensical) transitive, as would be the case with "I was smiled".

Just my view.

Blimey oh riley! Lawd luv us! I so wish I had the time to let such trivialities bother me.....I am actually,literally not going to write much more, my understanding of language and grammer isn't as hot as like what it ought to be! (Don't you just hate it when people use the word "hot" to mean good or even exceptional?) LMAO ....And when people insert punctuation when it's quite clearly not necessary(or should that be unecessary)....Oh....crumbs, did I spell that right??

missmiss and showofhands - I concede that James Joyce probably did that knowingly, and I'm in no position to critique his writing! It is interesting though that this 'informal' usage of the word as emphasis, has been around for over a hundred years and isn't a modern corruption of the meaning.

I'm sure that back in the day people didn't misuse the word literally quite so much.

Which particular day would that be then? Must be literally the most annoying and nonsensical phrase ever.

"Pan fried" is used to distinguish shallow-frying from deep-frying (even though deep frying can also occur in a pan).

And because using more words makes a dish sound more impressive.

Yes, I deliberately started a sentence with "and".

MILFLAW, but the French don't actually have a verb to sit so you're not really comparing like with like. Asseoir is to seat someone else. To say "I sat" you have to use s'asseoir, to seat oneself. To follow this logic therefore, je suis assis means I am seated, ie using the past participle of to seat. The whole "am sitting" thing is further complicated because French (and many other languages) don't have continuous (or progressive) tenses like English and only use their simple past in literature.

I hear "flout" and "flaunt" being used incorrectly eg " he flaunted the rules"; "she flouted her norks for all to see" etc. Also hate "lay" instead of "lie" eg "I'm going to have a nice lay-down" etc. Drives me nuts.

I literally hate all of these things. Especially 'I was sat'. I do tend to say 'Pat off Eastenders' because it just doesn't sound right to talk about 'Pat off Eastenders' in a non-Cockney way. I think an exception should be made just for Pat.
My pet hate is when people say ignorant when they mean rude.

My bugbear is 'exponential' used as a general description rather than a mathematical term with a specific meaning- for example , 'there has been an exponential increase in calls to the helpdesk', when the person means 'there has been a significant increase in the number of calls to the helpdesk'.

I literally gave 110% to the task of understanding what you meant by 'off of' but I had to read it about 5 times until I realised you were talking about the unstoppable rise of 'offuv'.

"MILFLAW, but the French don't actually have a verb to sit so you're not really comparing like with like. Asseoir is to seat someone else. To say "I sat" you have to use s'asseoir, to seat oneself. To follow this logic therefore, je suis assis means I am seated, ie using the past participle of to seat. The whole "am sitting" thing is further complicated because French (and many other languages) don't have continuous (or progressive) tenses like English and only use their simple past in literature."

That is exactly my point - that the (different) grammar in French, as used in Norman French and Anglo-French by those in power in the 11th-14th (ish) centuries, created an alternative set of valid structures in Middle and Early Modern English that were later ruled unacceptable by a set of dogmatic grammarians without regard to the English in use of their time!

By the way, I'm no MILF - I'm not even a woman!

I also think it's worth considering the "recent appearance" of these faults inthis light.

Until, say, 30 years ago, school English teaching was very dogmatic and (published) written English was much more conformist - and, of course, both of these applied the rules created (I use the word advisedly) by those early grammarians.

As our only data of what was done in the past comes from our own recollections of formal education and what is in print, it should come as no surprise to find these variants of usage are missing. That does not, however, mean that they never happened before; just that they never made it onto record!

My own bugbear is "between you and I", "for you and I" etc - I shudder twice because not only is it wrong, but it normally comes from people trying too hard to sound "correct" (on the flawed premise that "I" is a posher version of "me"). The same is true of "I wonder if I could just talk to yourself?" If people are going to make mistakes in my presence, I'd much rather it was the other way round, e.g. using "me" when "I" is correct, because at least that comes from the evidence of the spoken language of one's peers rather than some internal low-quality "Microsoft spellcheck" type package.

Whereby! Appallingly misused. Makes me literally puke every time I hear it hashed about.

duchesse

Do you literally puke, or just physically puke?

And, if so, whereby?

Moving forward, I wonder how it would impact on our language if we banned incorrect usage of 'literally'?

Malcontent

Good idea - let's progress that immediately. Can you give us a flavour if what it might involve?

Woah woah people! We need to get all our ducks in a row and do some serious blue skies thinking before moving on to an actual plan of action.

My ds and his friends pepper their sentences with literally and 'litch'

I find 'ducks in a row' quite funny for some reason, actually .

But noddy - do they literally pepper their sentences with it....?

MIFLAW - if you want to just leave that with myself, I'll be in touch with yourself as soon as I've physically gone ahead and done that for you.