What's Going on with ‘Nonplussed’? (2017)

Post by topaz0 » Tue, Apr 30, 2024, 7:35 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #268

topaz0 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to check m-w's entry for "literally". While they do include a sense 2 that is similar to "figuratively", there is a substantial note afterwards and an FAQ that does a great job of explaining the status of the two senses and a touch of their history. They give some facts that contradict your above, as well (related to the timeline, as well as what constitutes slang). In case you're interested: https://www.merria…

I don't want my granddaughters never learning the meaning of "figuratively" because it's fallen out of use, having been replaced by "literally".

Post by thaumasiotes » Wed, May 01, 2024, 5:48 AM UTC

lupire wrote: post #319

thaumasiotes wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as an American a sentence like "Whom did you invite to the party?" sounds a bit stilted and formal to me It would be fair to call this ungrammatical in American English. But whom does survive in fronted prepositional phrases ("the person for whom this item was obtained..."). It's dead in prepositional phrases that haven't been fronted just like it's dead everywhere else. Something vaguely similar happened in Spanis…

"Whom in this room would you boom?" is not ungrammatical though. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/11/theater/sunday-view-party...

Post by BobaFloutist » Wed, May 01, 2024, 6:23 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #267

kibwen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, I assume without evidence that it's way more common in British English, because over here it feels like an exotic word that people only pull out to be semi-fancy, like "whom".

> because over here it feels like an exotic word that people only pull out to be semi-fancy, like "whom". Them's fightin' words. 'Whom' is super useful because it is grammatically necessary.

Post by dpig_ » Wed, May 01, 2024, 10:52 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #311

tsimionescu wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people literally don't understand the original meaning and their usage takes over. Supposedly this has happened with "literally". What happened with literally is not that people didn't understand it's meaning and started using it with some other meaning. What happened with it is what happened with "very" a much longer time ago: it started being used as a generic augmentative adverb and started losing its speci…

I think that's how it started ("figuratively literally"), but not sure that modern youth know the literal meaning of literal. As you say, its meaning extremely vulnerable to the fate it experienced, and many words have suffered the same fate: very, really, actually, ... People who mock "misuse" of "literally" should take a good look that their own diction.