I'm all for figures of speech, but this "literally" thing has gone too far. Not to sound like the curmudgeon captain of the grammar police, but it's gotten to the point where people have started using "literally" instead of "very" or "extremely" whenever they can. Example: today at work I hear about how my coworker's vacation was "So amazing, (her) brain was literally fried." So she was telling me that someone took her brain and cooked it in a frying pan? This sort of thing happens all the time. Literally.
No! Wait! I can see why people do it- it's pretty catchy. And easy to add on after the end of a sentence. Literally. OK, that one actually worked, but you get what I'm trying to say here. And what are you supposed to do? You come off like the biggest nerdloser ever (see? it's not like I don't use hyperbole) and no one is going to be grateful- why don't people like being corrected more? I love being told when I'm wrong.
(pause to let everyone who knows me stop crying from laughter)
I also had an undisclosed family member tell me that since something happened in a book, that made it literal, as in- it was a literary reference. I told them that was a superlative mistake, which means "great" because it has the word "super" in it.
No comments:
Post a Comment