Showerthoughts

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[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 10 points 5 months ago (10 children)

You know of a word that satisfies OP's criteria and you're not going to share it?

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[+] mathic@lemmy.world 1 point 5 months ago

[deleted]

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[–] CanIFishHere@lemmy.ca -1 points 5 months ago (8 children)

It's not just one word. You use the appropriate adjective for the sentence. It's many words.

Or just leave out words like literally as they do ~~literally~~ absolutely nothing.

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[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 months ago (7 children)

Obviously, you use the word that expresses what you intend to express. The question is what that word would be when you want to express "literally" in the strict dictionary definition sense without ambiguity.

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[–] village604@adultswim.fan 1 point 5 months ago

Well, since it took the place of actually, why not use it?

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[–] CanIFishHere@lemmy.ca 1 point 5 months ago (5 children)

Give me an example where using the word literally makes the sentence clearer. For the most part using the word literally is entirely unnecessary, and provides no value.

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[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

I don't understand where this question is coming from. The premise of this question is that "literally" is ambiguous. That its meaning is unclear. How does an ambiguous word add clarity to a sentence?

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

There was a time when Literally was the word we used to eliminate ambiguity. Using it to mean the opposite of its originally intended, and accepted, definition injects ambiguity, the very thing the word is supposed to prevent.

That's literally an example of IRONY (another often wrongly used word).

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[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 0 points 5 months ago (1 child)

OP is asking how to solve a problem. You understand that repeating the problem does not answer the question, right?

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe 1 point 5 months ago*

That's not what I was doing. I was illustrating that this controversy about Literally is particularly IRONIC, another grammar word that is often used incorrectly.

And you didn't understand that, so your assignment for tomorrow is a 1000 word essay on whether your misunderstanding of my post constitutes irony itself, or if it is another example of false irony, such as the Alanis Morissette song.

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe 1 point 5 months ago

"He spent the day literally watching paint dry," explains that he was watching the paint dry, and not just using a common idiomatic expression for laziness or boredom.

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe 3 points 5 months ago (7 children)

We had a perfectly good word, which people with decent vocabulary used properly, and then people with bad vocabulary ruined it.

Why should those who had a decent vocabulary in the first place improve theirs, instead of the people with the poor vocabulary who ruin the accepted definitions of words improve theirs?

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[–] DJKJuicy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

I agree. The word "literally" was literally perfect. It was a binary descriptor. Other people's poor vocabulary ruined it, not the people who used it correctly.

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe 1 point 5 months ago

We gotta stick together against the Vocabulary Philistines.

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[–] SaraTonin@lemmy.world 1 point 5 months ago (4 children)

It’s not the product of having a bad vocabulary. The English language changes all the time. And “literally” not commonly being used in a figurative sense is relatively recent the figurative meaning dates back to the 1600s.

Mark Twain used the figurative literally. As did Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, Louisa M. Alcott, and many more people widely considered to be among the best authors ever to have lived. I don’t think anybody has accused them of having poor vocabularies, or not using words “properly”

It even makes sense WRT the etymology, because it means “as in literature”, from the Latin “literalis” - “pertaining to words”

If you want to have a go at an intensifier for being used improperly, you’d do better to target “really”. It means “like reality”, from the Latin “realis” - “actual”

So a sentence like “I was really shitting myself” makes less sense than “I was literally shitting myself”, if we’re referencing fear rather than faeces

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[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

Well, sure, I'd want to see the exact context of the use. It would be one thing if Twain was using it that way himself, it would be another if he was putting it into a character's mouth, which would add a slight nuance.

A modern example would be the guy in Parks & Rec who used "Lit'rally" often, and with emphasis, in situations that were clearly NOT Literal. I wouldn't assume that the writer endorses the concept.