Not Really, Literally

I believe my first exposure to the word/concept of “literally” was in an academic setting, used in a class or as a word to remember for spelling.  And that definition was something like: “adhering to fact or to the ordinary construction or primary meaning of a term or expression”.  To my mind, simply put, the term literally was used in cases where a common figure of speech or colloquial saying actually happened.  For example: you would say “It’s literally raining cats and dogs” only if an airplane carrying cats and dogs exploded in the sky creating such a downpour.

Alas, literally has seemed over the last decade or so to mean the opposite of this cherished definition.  Now, in a crazy downpour, you are likely to hear someone say, “It’s literally raining cats and dogs”.  No cats.  No dogs.  Literally is used for emphasis, it is an intensifier.

The benchmark of critique of this apparent change in usage is David Cross’ bit about the word.  How galvanizing that was in my critical view of the word: “[B]ecause when you misuse the word literally you are using it in the exact opposite way it was intended.  When you fuck that up you fuck that up so bad it’s not like a little goof, it’s not like when you said penultimate and meant ultimate where you’re off by one, you completely fucking misuse it.  You should stop using the word, forever, until you figure it out.”  Excoriating.

But, inevitably, things change.  I remember my Linguistics prof in college saying that the task of language was to get across meaning.  If what you say conveys what it is you meant to convey then you are correct.  If tend to agree with that.  So, I thought, let’s not be so critical of the misuse of literally.  Apocryphally, I heard somewhere that the definition had changed since the misuse is now so common – fair enough.

But when I went to track down proof of the change of the definition of literally I came to a stunning discovery: the definition, for as long as the word has existed could mean BOTH.  I should have known.  Merriam-Webster’s definition No. 2: in effect : virtually.  Shucks.

Still, to not let it go.  I would say definition No. 1 is the dominant definition.  The feeling is that those not familiar with the intricacies of language have co-opted the word.  In an unknowing fashion.  That is the what the critique of its No. 2 use is picking up on, whether or not it actually is correct be damned.  Does it represent a decline in national literacy?

Metaphorically, I see the misuse (yeah: misuse.  Why not, let’s be a militant grammarian.) as a sign of people’s need for certainty.  They need concretize what they are saying, to disambiguate what they are saying.  It is a running away from the horrible vicissitudes of life, the gnawing sensation that reality is not what it seems.  There are questions that people have about life – and especially life in the United States right now – questions which they cannot quite formulate.  Metaphor is shunned.  What is on the surface is simple, graspable.  I feel like using the word literally (misusing) is a code for all these feelings.