This thread has been inspired by @GNR's video game/sport thread. It reminded me of an infuriating news item I heard recently.
'Literally' is one of those words that's misused all the time. A certain type of person has a tendency to say things like "I literally died", apparently oblivious to the fact that if they had literally died, then they would literally be dead right now and unable to form idiotic sentences.
People have been using the word for emphasis for years now, ignoring the actual meaning of the word. And then recently, the definition of the word changed. 'Literally' can now mean both literally OR figuratively.
Opinions among my friends and other writers I know are actually kind of divided on this. So I'd be interested to hear what you guys think. Personally, I don't like it at all.
The argument for this new definition is that people have been using the word in this way already, and our formal language should evolve to match the way we actually speak to each other. And I usually don't have a problem with that premise. I'm not one of those people who complains every time they add a word like 'selfie' to the dictionary. It is a real word that describes a real thing, and it's used by lots of people all the freaking time. It should be a word.
But the problem I have with the new definition of 'literally', is that it's made the word LITERALLY pointless. It now means either one thing, or the exact opposite of that thing. So it means nothing. There's no reason to use it anymore. It would be like changing the definition of the word 'night' so it can mean either 'night' or 'day'.
I'm interested if there are any differing opinions on this one. I'm really just hoping that people will gradually start using the word properly again and we can ignore this new, crappy definition.