But when "literally" means "figuratively", how do you express the concept that "literally" used to mean? You have to go out of your way to circumlocute, which is at least annoying, if nothing else.
I share your dislike for a central language authority, but I think there are non-authoritative solutions that are consistent with the missions and practices of dictionaries.
One possibility: dictionaries could report that a large fraction of English experts or teachers consider a particular usage incorrect. This would be a dispassionate reporting of people's behavior as well.
You may ask "How do you pick the experts?" Well, how did we pick the people whose diction the dictionary supposedly represents? :) We make do with approximations. I think that the OED could easily afford to sample 1000 English teachers ranging from professors to grade school, and ranging across many geographical regions and social strata. It would actually be fascinating data to see alongside a definition!
Edit: I had meant to add that the sampling for the words need not happen for every (word, expert) combination; giving each instructor 1000 words chosen uniformly from a pool of 10,000 words should get you reasonable coverage for almost all of those 10,000 words. So the costs of this sampling experiment on both OED and the expert volunteers would be quite low.
> I share your dislike for a central language authority, but I think there are non-authoritative solutions that are consistent with the missions and practices of dictionaries.
There are well-tested solutions. One is to have a language authority such as you suggest above, like the Académie française, which struggles against what it regards as erosions and distortions of proper French:
Another is simply to list definitions in the order of their contemporary preference, as dictionary.com does. Interestingly, Merriam-Webster uses the reverse order, listing the oldest definitions first, as in the case of "Decimated", which once meant reduced by one tenth but now means substantially destroyed:
> One possibility: dictionaries could report that a large fraction of English experts or teachers consider a particular usage incorrect.
Apart from the problem of choosing experts, I think this would only slow the natural rate of language evolution. I think the problem is deeper -- it asks whether language is (or should be) susceptible to evolution by means of natural selection as people's tastes and needs change.
It seems one can not express the view that a dictionary made a mistake without someone helpfully pointing out that language changes (over time, even). We know that. We might know that, be well-behaved descriptivists, and yet still think that this definition is wrong. Because we don't think that an ignorant habit on the part of certain 14 year old girls means that the language has actually changed yet. It's a judgement call, and it might just be that displaying this definition shows poor judgement. That doesn't mean that it won't be justified in another 40 years or so.
> It seems one can not express the view that a dictionary made a mistake ...
But the dictionary didn't make a mistake. The word "literally" means what most people think, as well as its opposite. A dictionary's purpose is solely to report how people use words (it describes, it doesn't prescribe), and it got this use right.
> It's a judgement call, and it might just be that displaying this definition shows poor judgement.
That depends. Is this new definition out in the wild? Apparently so, in which case the listing is valid. Over at Webster's in the days of print, if a word was used with a particular meaning in ten recognized publications, it became official.
> But the dictionary didn't make a mistake. The word "literally" means what most people think, as well as its opposite.
The figurative use of "literal" does not mean the opposite of the literal use (it doesn't mean "not literally (in its literal sense)", it means "as if literally (in its literal sense)".)
Quote: "For more than a hundred years, critics have remarked on the incoherency of using literally in a way that suggests the exact opposite of its primary sense of 'in a manner that accords with the literal sense of the words.'"
> Well, "figuratively" is an antonym for "literally", and this specific use of literally means figuratively.
No, it doesn't. Its an intensifier that is used when the fact that the use is figurative is (assumed by the speaker/writer) to be clear from context. The use of "literally" is not a means of communicating the fact that the modified term is being used figuratively, it is used to convey the idea that the experience represented by the clearly-figurative use has unusual proximity to the experience that would occur were the modified term literally applicable.
Yes, lots of people say it means the exact opposite, but it doesn't, and you can't understand what people are saying when they use it if you think it does.
1. What is your standard for judging whether a definition is right or wrong? (What is the objective measure being applied?)
2. What is your justification for applying that standard to the dictionary in question? (Is it the dictionaries stated policy? It is broadly accepted as the right standard by linguists?)
3. Where is the evidence that the standard has not been met with regard to the definition in question?
If you want to make the argument that the definition was improper, make the argument, but so far, it just sounds like you are asserting your preferred usage as the only allowed one, as there doesn't seem to be anything else offered to support your criticism.
> yet still think that this definition is wrong. Because we don't think that an ignorant habit on the part of certain 14 year old girls means that the language has actually changed yet. It's a judgement call, and it might just be that displaying this definition shows poor judgement.
You might think that, but you would be incorrect. This usage is very common, and much more widespread than 14 year old girls. Maybe the people in your circle don't use it that way, but the plural of anecdote is not data.
> If you think only 14 year old girls make this mistake ...
It's not a mistake -- people are free to use words any way they want. Also, the "literally" entry over a Merriam-Webster shows Norman Cousins using the word this way: