Comment on The word literally makes me so irrationally angry

• GiveOver@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I was playing a video game with a buddy recently. I was in the middle of a flank and he said he was out of ammo. I said “literally 0 bullets?” And he said “yep literally 0”. I aborted my flank to run back and give him some ammo but got killed as I ran back. Just then, he starts shooting.

  I don’t think context makes the word “literally” clear. We ruined the word and now we need a new one to establish we’re not exaggerating.

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  • jbrains@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Thank you for the example. Indeed, the context did not make that clear.

    That makes me wonder what he thought he was saying. I infer something like “very few”. Or he genuinely though he had no bullets left and was wrong. I’d say that second case seems highly unlikely, but it wouldn’t totally shock me.

    I wonder whether the word is the issue or the speaker’s intent: if the speaker insists in exaggerating, then no word they use is going to convey that they aren’t exaggerating. I wouldn’t think them likely to use any word to convey that they aren’t exaggerating, because they are. I think of it like a person bent on sarcasm: you simply need to detect it somehow, then filter every word accordingly.

    That wouldn’t make the word “literally” literally ruined, but might instead merely indicate that we can’t rely on it as a safeword against exaggeration. 🤷

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• agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Really, it’s fine. Context makes it clear when we literally mean “literally” literally.

  It literally doesn’t. The whole point of “literally” is to establish that context.

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  • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    That used to be the point of it. Over time the added impact that using it out of place gives to hyperbole has changed that point until it is necessary for enough context to exist to make clear that it is used in it’s original manner.

    It’ll probably happen eventually to anything that replaces the world as well, sort of like how things like swear words and euphemisms lose their impact from overuse and end up getting replaced only to have the same happen again. At some level a quick way of saying “this is actually true” serves as an easy source of exaggeration if used somewhere where it clearly can’t be so, and as soon as someone does that, the meaning starts being dependant on context.

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    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Which is only so bad because the purpose of the word itself is to provide context. It literally means “this is not a euphemism”, and the only reason to use it in the first place is if the existing context would lead one to assume it was.

      When you need to give extra context and additional words to clarify an ambiguous “literally”, you’ve robbed the word of its original meaning. It can no longer fulfill that purpose. It would literally be more efficient to just not use it at all, and just skip straight to whatever you were going to say to clarify the context. The meaning has been stolen.

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  • jbrains@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I don’t remember the last time someone used the word “literally” and I couldn’t tell whether they meant it in the classic sense or in the modern sense, either as an intensifier or as filler. If you do, then I’d genuinely like to learn about that, because I don’t think I could imagine such a scenario. I might lack imagination or I might not be around people who use the word often enough to judge.

    I genuinely believe you overstate the matter, especially in claiming that the word had been robbed of its previous meaning. I still use the word exclusively with its classic meaning and I never see confused faces when I do. 🤷

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