Oh yeah, one more thing to add to the list of annoyances.
People who misuse the word, "literally."
This weekend I heard a broadcaster for the Weather Channel say this:
"This storm literally put up a brick wall, so that some areas saw very little snow, but you just have to drive a few miles north of those areas to count the snow in feet and not inches."
Fail!
The storm did NOT put up a brick wall. Storms can't do that. They lack hands and access to bricks, trowels, and mortar. Now, if you had said a storm was literally tearing down walls, you may have been right. I've heard of storms that can do that. I believe they're called tornadoes and hurricanes.
You could have made a perfectly nice metaphor if you had just said the storm put up a brick wall (leaving the "literally" out) because some areas saw very little snow while other areas just a few miles away got a foot. That would have been a nice way of explaining things to your viewers. As it is, you just annoyed a lot of English majors.
If this were the only time recently I'd heard that word misused, it wouldn't irritate so much. But like the misuse of the " 's " to make a word plural, it's become a virus. (Not literally!) When a well-known actress was interviewed about a shoot that took place on a cold, rainy day, she said "We were all literally freezing out there on the set." No, you weren't, or you clearly wouldn't be able to talk right now, would you? You would have some serious medical complications. I heard a student here say that he couldn't wait for lunch because he was starving. And for emphasis added, "Literally. I am." I doubt that. I mean, he looked pretty healthy to me.
I'm just going to stop there because this whole thing is killing me. (Literally! Slowly, but surely.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
The worst, for me, is "unique". Things are not very unique, or really unique or kinda unique. Unique means one of a kind, so something is either unique or it isn't. Something can be truly unique, as opposed to falsely unique, though. I can't stand hearing people misuse it. It's like the proverbial fingernails on a chalkboard
someone having an "ideal" is my hang up....
We have a few. The mute point is everywhere; BR has gone so far as to compliment people mid-meeting on "nice use of moot." Surreal is hopelessly overused. Unless you are nude in public talking to a purple hippo about clocks melting down the side of a building, your situation is not surreal. Uncanny, maybe even preternatural, but not surreal. Non-words like Proactive makes me want to dig in my heels. Why can't we just think ahead, or anticipate a problem? I'm old fashioned, I guess. I could object to all the co-opting of nouns into verb usage (transitioning, texting) - but talk about swimmimg upstream . . .
Post a Comment