Literally speechless
IHAVE some terrible news. The Oxford English Dictionary has defied the Geneva Convention by condoning horrific abuse. The poor word writhing on a torture table is “literally”. Literally has always meant “taking words in their primary sense, without allegory, metaphor or exaggeration”. But the latest version of the OED says the word can now be “used to indicate that some metaphorical or hyperbolical expression is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense”. In other words, you can say you literally died without literally being dead.
The barbarian who wrote the new entry has the grace to add that this common (mis)use of literally is “considered irregular in standard English since it reverses the original sense of literally (‘not figuratively or metaphorically’)”.
Seeing such madness in a dictionary is like hearing the pope tell his cardinals: “Oh go ahead and sin, everyone’s doing it so it must be right.”
This act of linguistic terror has caused consternation among pedants, although as Christopher Howse of The Telegraph points out, “uproar is a common state for pedants to be in”. He and Richard Preston are particularly uproarious. They are coauthors of She Literally Exploded, a list of terms that infuriate word protectors. Of “literally” the book says: “Now used at random as an intensifier or synonym for ‘really’, by those with tin ears.”
Those with meat ears have long been upset by the mistreatment of literally. Gorry Bowes Taylor wrote to me some time ago calling for its protection. The examples that annoyed her were “my eyes literally popped out of my head” and “she literally felt the weight of the world on her shoulders”.
The opposite of literal is figurative, a colourful description usually employing a metaphor. If someone tells you they were legless, it is a metaphor for drunk — though there may be literal exceptions.
“I laughed my head off” is a metaphor. If you literally laughed your head off, it means you laughed so much and so loudly that someone who had been trying to read in peace took a cleaver to your neck. (Don’t laugh, it could literally happen.) After this you would neither be able to laugh nor speak, so it’s fair to say that anyone who tells you they literally laughed their head off is literally lying.
Or not anymore, if the corporation that controls the inclusion of words in the OED has its way.
Speaking of corporations, I was in the head office of a retailer the other day. Pasted everywhere were signs telling people to “report shrinkage”. I wanted to call the number on the signs and report the shrinkage of the English language, because someone appears to have stolen the word “theft”.
In the same crusade to avoid clarity, retailers like to “minimise wastage”. What a wastage of two unnecessary letters. You could use them better in colloquial South African by saying: “Ag, what a waste.”
Wastage and shrinkage are both, unfortunately, in the dictionary. Under wastage, the OED lists a second, inhumane definition: “Loss of employees other than by dismissal.” I hope that doesn’t catch on.
Frankly, I’m disappointed in dictionaries. I suppose they have to grow, as words do, and encompass new definitions that have become epidemic (not endemic) in everyday speech. But when a dictionary says it’s ok to use “literally” as a substitute for “figuratively”, it is failing in its duty to improve clear communication. You might as well put a second definition under “dog” that says “cat”. Cat-training classes would be literally much more entertaining to watch, but it’s just so wrong.