"Literally" billions of people are "literally" confused. Literally.
The new word for the season seems to be “literally.” Cindy and I have noticed that we literally can’t go a full day without hearing someone use the word. Most of the time, it is being used for emphasis instead of clarification. We’ve heard things like “literally gave me goose bumps” and “literally saves you money.” Neither of those needed the word literally—it doesn’t add any meaning.
The worst is when someone uses the word literally to emphasize a hyperbole. For example, “it was literally raining cats and dogs.” That would mean that it wasn’t just raining hard, but dogs and cats were actually falling from the sky. While this isn’t entirely impossible, it is most likely not the intended meaning.
The best way to use the word literally is to alleviate confusion and to point out when you aren’t exaggerating. For example, if you are counting the number of times the word literally is used in this post (including the title), you could say that it literally shows up over a dozen times. Then, people would know that it wasn’t just used a bunch of times, but that you actually counted the occurrences and the number was larger than twelve.
While I’m on the topic of saying silly things… Can someone tell me the proverb about the laser? Hillary Clinton recently said that the “United States needs to be just focused like the proverbial laser.” While she isn’t the first person to talk about this proverbial laser, I’m not familiar with the story. To quote Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means”. Literally.
