ANYway. I'd really like to get some responses to my upcoming query, but I've tried that with you before with very little success. So I'll tell you what: if you're willing to respond but don't want to go public with this, if you post a comment on the blog I will extract the salient information and delete your comment before anyone else can see it. Which I can promise, since I have comment moderation on, so I see all comments and have to approve them before they post. (It cuts down on the porn and viagra links.)
Okay?
Okay.
Here's the question.
When you hear people misuse words, such as saying "literally" when they don't mean "literally," does it make you
A. happy that the English language is continuing to evolve
B. sad that people don't use words properly
C. something else: _______________________
or
D. you don't care at all?
I have had this conversation with my #1 son and his wife, both of whom are intelligent people possessing Bachelor of Arts degrees from accredited universities, and both of them incline towards A. I'm more of a B. person . . . with a side-order of anger and a perhaps sad desire to correct the speaker. Just being upfront.
Help a feller out now, y'hear? Shoot me a letter. Or a phrase if you're a C. kind of person.
Thanks for your support.
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And our survey says . . . well, so far only one response (insert anonymous thanks thanks shout out here) . . . which said:
"I am mostly in the 'B' camp. I cringed when I first heard 'literally' being used as it is often now used, as a synonym of 'figuratively.' That occurrence was on an episode of How I Met Your Mother in which Robin said her head literally exploded. I just checked Websters and it looks like the offending use has been around for quite some time, so maybe I just need to learn more stuff. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-literally I am in the 'A' camp when new idioms arise.
Totally with you there, Gentle Reader. New idioms are a different matter for me as well, and I most enthusiastically embrace neologisms and neo-neologisms (foe shizzle). It's the imbecility and arrogance of misuse that annoys the fucking fuckety fuck out of me.
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And our survey says . . .
Years ago my Greek professor said that the decline of language has always preceded the decline of civilizations, and his point lodged in my brain. We prefer to not use full words anymore but communicate in acronyms and emojis. Who needs words to have definitions or meanings when he can just watch a screen flashing lights and commercials straight into his brain? We're almost all literate--but barely literate. Seems like devolution to me. I guess you could put me in the "our civilization is sinking fast" camp.
Fuckin' A, Bubba! I was soft selling my position before, actually. It pisses me off that people think it's okay to be ignorant. (Though it does explain our current political leadership.) When I was talking to my #1son and his wife about this and they gave me the "language evolves" and "what's important is that you know what a person means" response 1, I started saying things like, "Well, I see your prawn, but I still think that trilobites should be treated gently." I was the only one who thought that was funny. But I don't mean to call them out, and they are sheltered from my Language Anger by the umbrella of my paternal love. Foe shizzle.
1 And hey, let's be straight up here, that REALLY means, "Stop clinging to the past like it's a piece of wreckage you found mid-ocean, you old fart."
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