Dichroic Reflections

literally annoying

"She ate so much, she literally burst."

Presumably, this would have
involved little pieces of person and gouts of blood and used food showering the
room, like the Mr. Creosote episode in my favorite Monty Python movie, The
Meaning of Life. (Yeah, yeah, I know, everyone else thinks Life of
Brian or The Holy Grail were better.)

"He was literally
rolling on the floor with laughter."

Uh-huh. When was the last time
you saw an attack of hysteria that involved actual rugburn?

The above
examples are made up, but they're not far from the language I hear regularly, in
person, on the news, in movies, and even sometimes in print. I'm not a complete
knee-jerk language curmudgeon. I use the word "hopefully" because I know of no
exact substitute -- "it is to be hoped" is awkward and sounds unnatural to me.
Furthermore, I think the rule about splitting infinitives and all of the other
prescriptive grammarians' attempts to make English function like Latin are silly
and misguided. Sometimes I even say "me" when I mean "I", though rarely the other
way around. (When I want to be hypercorrect, I try to start with being actually
correct.)

The word "literally", though, has an actual, current use,
one which is not covered by other words. It means "This actually happened; I'm not
speaking metaphorically." It is the antonym of "figuratively". It does NOT mean,
"I want this to be a really strong metaphor. If you want to do that, you're on the
hook to come up with an actual strong metaphor. Vivid and interesting speech is
an art, not a birthright. Or maybe it's a hearer's birthright, but not a
speaker's. I have a literal mind, and these things (figuratively) grate on
it.

And if I hear one more damned newscaster telling me it's going to
be raining cats and dogs, I may be throwing those cats and dogs at
them.

Figuratively speaking, of course. (Then again, I live in a
desert, so they'd be safe anyway.)