And the prize for the most egregious use of the word “literally” in last Sunday's democratic debates goes to . . .
Bill Richardson, for the line “Entrenched interests are literally stealing our children's future.”
No, Governor Richardson, outside of a sci-fi story, you cannot literally steal someone’s future.
10 Comments:
Yikes. Perhaps we could start a campaign against the inappropriate use of 'literally'?
A friend of mine has a huge pet peeve about people using the word "literally" in figurative senses. As a good descriptivist, I shouldn't really care, since the meaning is still conveyed, but it's fun to think about what the literal interpretation would actually be . . .
Hee hee. I love it.
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Sure you can. How else could I be celebrating my 385th birthday this year?
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(found it
You're all obviously unaware of the conspiracy theory that Richardson is, literally, a time-manipulating alien :)
I think you can still be a descriptivist and recognize stupidity.
Brilliant :D
oh man, this is one of my big pet peeves since my meeting my husband who notes every times someone does this: "It literally blew me away!" or "I was literally walking on air!"
Please.
To spend money today that must be repaid in the future by someone else; where that someone else has no say in today's use of funds (which monies are only credit today secured by someone else's actual produced value in the future) is to literally steal today money which must either be caused by someone else in the future to exist, or else force that someone else in the future to declare themselves bankrupt in that future time--very reasonably the someone forced to pay in the future for our decisions today will be our own descendants, our children if you will--thus we literally steal our children's future, we hijack it by force of credit today which must be paid later. Not the same misuse of literally as "literally walking on air". It is appropriate in the given context. We do literally execute cause today which will in the future result in a literal effect.
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