Literally, I will, like, die if you do this

Einige sprachliche Marotten bringen unsere Kolumnistin echt auf die Palme — ob im übertragenen Sinne oder buchstäblich war bei Redaktionsschluss nicht bekannt.

I will not, “like,” die if you do what I’m about to tell you not to do. Nor will I “literally” die. But I promise you, it won’t be pretty!

So, which aspect of English will I wax philosophical about in this issue? As you might have guessed, the misuse of the words “like” and “literally” in modern English, especially across the pond, in that place I call home.

“Like, there were literally a thousand people there,” a friend recently texted me, referring to a party at someone else’s house. Why do I have a problem with this? Well, I don’t know my friend’s friend, but I’d bet my grandmother that the house in question couldn’t hold a thousand guests. So, why say “literally”?

“Literally” means “exactly.” Using it makes sense if you’re stressing that a phrase that could be used figuratively is actually meant in the true sense of the word: “In the Netherlands in the 17th century, tulip bulbs were literally worth their weight in gold.”

Nowadays, though, “literally” is also used informally for emphasis: “Their wedding cake was literally as big as my house!” Sigh. I could give you a million other examples — not literally, of course — but you get the idea. Of all the words in English to use figuratively, why use “literally”?

Now, let’s move on to “like,” which has morphed into several offending usages. As American linguist John Mcwhorter notes in his book Words on the Move: Why English Won’t — and Can’t — Sit Still (Like, Literally), “lic” in Old English meant “body” and was part of the word “gelic,” which meant “with the body of.” This was another way of saying “similar to.” From there, it’s easy to see how we got to the traditional comparative meaning of the modern word “like.”

Today, however, “like” is too often used informally, mainly in two ways: “She was, like, really angry!” Here, “like” is used hesitantly, to protect the speaker and listener from the bolder statement, “She was really angry!” In the first sentence, grammatically, she wasn’t really angry, only in a state like anger, which sounds softer — although it’s clear that, in reality, she was very mad. As Mcwhorter writes, today “everything is like itself, rather than itself.”

“He was like, ‘Are you coming or not?’ and we were like, ‘No, not if you’re going to act like that!’” Here, “like” is used to quote someone, which is sometimes accompanied by mimicry. It doesn’t mean “similar to” but, rather, the opposite: “verbatim.” Of the two examples, this one offends more, because the usage — as above, with “literally” — is the opposite of what the word really means.

Don’t talk like this — just come straight out and say what you mean. I don’t like “like” (and I mean that literally).