Get Out of the Literal Kitchen
So it's hotter than usual for this time of year, and I just overheard someone on the phone say "it's literally blazing here in Southern California." It's true--the air is actually on fire. I am on fire right now as I sit here typing this on my burning keyboard. Flames are shooting out of my eyeballs. Smoke is blazing out of my ears.
I recognize that nobody likes a prissy grammarian dickhead and I don't mean to jump on the "Eats Shoots and Leaves" bandwagon filled with self-righteous and easily offended English majors who have nothing better to do than make fun of the way people talk, but when in the name of all that is holy did term "literally" literally lose all meaning and become just another way of implying emphasis? It drives me fucking crazy. Just in the past week in this office I've heard ostensibly educated, native English speakers say the following things:
--"We literally need to eat, drink and breathe these numbers."
--"He literally hijacked the meeting."
--"I literally lost my mind."
--"I am literally going to kill him."
Nobody that I work with, to my knowledge, actually consumes and digests numbers instead of bagels every morning; nobody runs into meeting rooms with an uzi and forces the boss to land the building in Cuba; nobody stumbles around without their head attached to their body, and I haven't actually seen anyone murder a co-worker (though I wouldn't rule out the possibility.) I literally am not able to shut up about this anymore. So here's what I'll do--I'll write a bitchy little post about it and put it up on the Internet for 5 people to read. That'll make things better.
Changing the world, literally one person at a time.
I recognize that nobody likes a prissy grammarian dickhead and I don't mean to jump on the "Eats Shoots and Leaves" bandwagon filled with self-righteous and easily offended English majors who have nothing better to do than make fun of the way people talk, but when in the name of all that is holy did term "literally" literally lose all meaning and become just another way of implying emphasis? It drives me fucking crazy. Just in the past week in this office I've heard ostensibly educated, native English speakers say the following things:
--"We literally need to eat, drink and breathe these numbers."
--"He literally hijacked the meeting."
--"I literally lost my mind."
--"I am literally going to kill him."
Nobody that I work with, to my knowledge, actually consumes and digests numbers instead of bagels every morning; nobody runs into meeting rooms with an uzi and forces the boss to land the building in Cuba; nobody stumbles around without their head attached to their body, and I haven't actually seen anyone murder a co-worker (though I wouldn't rule out the possibility.) I literally am not able to shut up about this anymore. So here's what I'll do--I'll write a bitchy little post about it and put it up on the Internet for 5 people to read. That'll make things better.
Changing the world, literally one person at a time.
posted by tom at 12:52 PM
2 Comments:
i was thinking that tonight we should have an outdoor barbecue. i'm so hungry that i could literally eat a horse! i just came from a enormous annual sale at the mall. everyone is having their end-of-season clearance on this beautiful day in july! i bought various varieties of fragranced soaps and a collection of assorted hand towels with sheeps on them. and while i was waiting in line at a atm machine i realized that i tested so many fragrances that i literally smell like a sewer! i think that everyone in line was in agreeance with that! well, i think that i better stop internetting now. gotta go check the dvr recorder to make sure that it recorded "the view". c-ya!
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