The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
- James Nicoll
"Literally" has meant figuratively for centuries[0]. It's a language construct known as a contronym[1,2].Yes, English is not strictly typed, and doesn't conform to a formal spec or mathematical proof. A word can have multiple definitions. A word can have contradictory definitions. The definition of a word can change over time without needing to submit to an approval process. A word can mean something different the next town over. Dialects and creoles and slang exist in wild, flagrant abandon and disregard for your rules. And all of it is valid. Despite all of this, people manage to be able to comprehend one another, even when using literally to not literally mean literally. Even the user who used "less" instead of "fewer" upthread that started this. Everyone understood exactly what they meant. The two words mean literally the same thing. But some people insist on maintaining a meaningless formality and insisting upon rules that don't matter, or rather insisting that even in casual conversations, their rules must take precedence over everyone else's. [0]https://www.thecut.com/2018/01/the-300-year-history-of-using... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contronym [2]https://www.quora.com/Etymology-When-did-the-word-literally-... |