PeaceBang is going to SNAP, children.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop using “literally” in the purely emphatic sense, as a way to punch up the drama of your verb. It’s ungrammatical, juvenile and incredibly irritating.
It LITERALLY drives me crazy.
Love, Auntie PeaceBang
It does make for some very vivid mental imagery. (It also drives me crazy.)
Amen. Preach it. When I want to use that word I feel as if I need to say “literally in the classic sense of the word” which ruins what was once a great occasional use word.
I don’t think I use ‘literally’ in this way. But going through my text sometimes I’ll see the following, probably used correctly, but way too often:
simply
deeply
just
so
little
very
Satisfying to go through & cross ’em out – at least before the printed version is released!
My favourite misuse of “literally” from many years ago. For reasons which escape me I was watching a darts match on TV. The commentator came out with the immortal line:
“And that dart literally flew like a greyhound”
Fer sure!
Gidget, I use the word JUST way way way way way too much! Am always crossing it out!
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I literally want to smack my friend whenever she uses it.
“Incredibly” is another of those words. It’s often used to describe situations that are quite credible.
I blame it on the fact we like a certain cadence to our sentences, much like the Brits. We overuse adverbs to soften our sentences and keep them from sounding terse but direct.
Can I please add the word “basically” to that? I have a parishioner who begins every sentence “Well, basically…” makes me want to scream.
Let me add the word “unique” to the misused list. When some silly child on the news tells me something is “very unique”, I want to grab them and shriek, “Unique means there is only one of it, you idiot! How can something be more unique than being the only one of its kind!?!”
Calming down now………
“Unique” is not so simple. People may not like qualifying the word “unique,” but this isn’t a 21st century aberration. Popular usage for well over a century has established it to also mean simply “unusual.”
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unique
Literally is headed that way as well.
My list of irritants:
“To be honest”
“per se”
“blah blah blah blah”
“yada yada yada”
I’m not fond of “as it were”. Pointless academic padding.
Peregrinato….how about
“That is to say”
or
“Dare I say”
Okay,since we’re listing peeves, how about “at the end of the day” ? I HATE that one!
A Princess Bride reference is called for: “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
I have wanted to respond to the misuse of “literally” by saying “Really? Your legs are literally falling off?” but have been prevented by a combination of politeness and dread that they’ll just look at me blankly and repeat, “Yes, literally.”
I plead guilty to “incredibly,” though, which just seems like hyperbole to me. Such are the hypocrises of grammar.
Peregrinato, I cringe at “unique”–though of course, technically, everything is unique. But defenders of “very unique” might point to a very distinguished case of treating an absolute term as relative: Hamlet talking about “how infinite in faculties” humans are. Our faculties are either infinite or finite, you would think, but if it’s good enough for Shakespeare . . .
I’m weary of people who end their comments with …”just saying”.
I’m weary of people who end their written comments with …”just saying”.
From a post by a humorous tech blogger:
“It is not hyperbole to say the streets literally ran red with hyperbole!”
http://www.macworld.com/article/1166374/macalope_are_you_crazy.html
Thank you SOOOOOOO much for this. It drives me crazy.
Not literally, of course.
Thank you! I tried to explain once to a friend whose faith was heading in a fundamentalist direction that when he says he takes scripture literally, that “literally” does not mean “seriously”…and received a blank look in return.
I would like to add “step up to the plate” and “brilliant” – annoying when used too often
“Out of the box” makes me want to shove “into the box” (as in casket) any offender who uses the phrase. And I pray that a drill falls down upon the heads of anyone who insists we must “drill down” into data/situations/institutional structures/the Alaskan wildland.