sirjolt: How long has Webster defined the word “literally” so that it can also mean “figuratively?” :( I cling to the rock that is my OED. Please don’t change on me… Efforts to stifle language change or to create a standard version of language never work. It’d be like yelling at a beach, telling it to stay still while the tide comes in. Imagine words as little sandflakes on the language seashore. You can’t hold them still, either. They’re constantly picked up and tossed around in the time-tide. When words change, language changes, too. Shifting shoals, you know. There are many ways that words change meaning over time. Sometimes broad meanings become more specific. In the Old English, “starve” simply meant to die and now it specifically means to die from a lack of food. Sometimes very specific terms are generalized: “shit” used to refer specifically to cow excrement, and now “shit” can refer to all manner of things- scatological or not. Sometimes words slide across a scale of linguistic goodness. Words can be pejorated or ameliorated. “Silly” used to mean holy, now it means ridiculous. In contrast, in the 14th century, “nice” referred to a stupid, foolish person. Although it’s rare, some words shift in meaning so far that they become auto-antonyms (click through for the wikipedia entry). From Wikipedia: Many English examples result from nouns being verbed into distinct senses “add <noun> to” and “remove <noun> from”; e.g. dust,seed, stone (or pit).  What’s awkward about the conflation of “literally” and “figuratively” is that we’re right in the middle of the semantic shift. Changes in word meaning can take hundreds of years, with incremental and overlapping shades of differences from one usage to the next (cf. the dozens of meanings of the word “gay”). The change in “literally” has been relatively quick (within my lifetime, it seems) and to further complicate matters, there aren’t technically any shades of meaning between the sense “actually” and “not actually”. But this change has actually happened. Literally has literally changed its meaning. And while that’s confusing to everyone using the word, the new definition ought to be captured. What’s the point of a dictionary? Is it to provide accurate definitions of words, or is it to provide definitions of words the way people use them? Dictionaries should be accurate, but they also need to represent contemporary usage. No one uses “silly” to mean “holy” anymore, and it wouldn’t make sense to have the archaic definition listed in most dictionaries. At some point an arbitrary decision has to be made - how common does a new usage or misusage need to be before it enters the dictionary? Though it pains my (hypocritically descriptivist) heart to say it, I welcome the new, literal interpretation of the word. 

sirjolt:

How long has Webster defined the word “literally” so that it can also mean “figuratively?” :(

I cling to the rock that is my OED. Please don’t change on me…

Efforts to stifle language change or to create a standard version of language never work. It’d be like yelling at a beach, telling it to stay still while the tide comes in. Imagine words as little sandflakes on the language seashore. You can’t hold them still, either. They’re constantly picked up and tossed around in the time-tide. When words change, language changes, too. Shifting shoals, you know.

There are many ways that words change meaning over time. Sometimes broad meanings become more specific. In the Old English, “starve” simply meant to die and now it specifically means to die from a lack of food. Sometimes very specific terms are generalized: “shit” used to refer specifically to cow excrement, and now “shit” can refer to all manner of things- scatological or not. Sometimes words slide across a scale of linguistic goodness. Words can be pejorated or ameliorated. “Silly” used to mean holy, now it means ridiculous. In contrast, in the 14th century, “nice” referred to a stupid, foolish person. Although it’s rare, some words shift in meaning so far that they become auto-antonyms (click through for the wikipedia entry). From Wikipedia:

Many English examples result from nouns being verbed into distinct senses “add <noun> to” and “remove <noun> from”; e.g. dust,seed, stone (or pit). 

What’s awkward about the conflation of “literally” and “figuratively” is that we’re right in the middle of the semantic shift. Changes in word meaning can take hundreds of years, with incremental and overlapping shades of differences from one usage to the next (cf. the dozens of meanings of the word “gay”). The change in “literally” has been relatively quick (within my lifetime, it seems) and to further complicate matters, there aren’t technically any shades of meaning between the sense “actually” and “not actually”.

But this change has actually happened. Literally has literally changed its meaning. And while that’s confusing to everyone using the word, the new definition ought to be captured. What’s the point of a dictionary? Is it to provide accurate definitions of words, or is it to provide definitions of words the way people use them? Dictionaries should be accurate, but they also need to represent contemporary usage. No one uses “silly” to mean “holy” anymore, and it wouldn’t make sense to have the archaic definition listed in most dictionaries. At some point an arbitrary decision has to be made - how common does a new usage or misusage need to be before it enters the dictionary? Though it pains my (hypocritically descriptivist) heart to say it, I welcome the new, literal interpretation of the word.