The oldest known record of that use is from the 1700s, and prescriptivists didn’t start whining about it in any significant amount until 100 years ago.
Upvoting because you are technically right, even though I will never accept that as the definition of literally - and I know this literally puts me in the wrong.
A very easy way to square all this (and what I assumed everyone understood to be going on before I ever heard of this discourse) is that people are just using exaggeration for emphasis (a very common rhetorical tactic).
Of course people aren’t saying it’s literally thing-they’re-referring-to but that it has so much in common that it’s “practically” almost exactly that thing.
I feel like people overcomplicate what needn’t be complicated, sometimes (like people hallucinating a “fourth-person” pronoun to explain a convention perfectly already provided by current linguistical constructs).
The notion that “just because someone lived a long time ago, they must have been backwards, ignorant, or stupid” is one that needs to die a loud and public death. It is that line of thinking that leads people to believe that aliens built the Pyramids, Stonehenge, etc. because they are certain that folks back then weren’t clever enough to move large rocks about.
He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.
– The History of Emily Montague, by Frances Brooke, 1769 (emphasis: mine)
The use in the figurative sense isn’t valid merely because of “some rando uttering a word” a long time ago. It is valid because it continued to be utilized with that meaning for the next 250 years and is still used and understandable in that sense to this day.
I understood you claimed that the first known use of ”literally” would have been used as ”figuratively”, but in the link it says it was used in a literal sense. But I’m tired so I might have gotten something wrong.
Oh, no. I only meant that the use in the figurative sense was more than twice as old as any concerted movement against it. And even that movement is “old”. This isn’t some skibidi Ohio dreamt up by “kids these days”. It has a well established pattern of usage.
Except it literally does.
The oldest known record of that use is from the 1700s, and prescriptivists didn’t start whining about it in any significant amount until 100 years ago.
Upvoting because you are technically right, even though I will never accept that as the definition of literally - and I know this literally puts me in the wrong.
A very easy way to square all this (and what I assumed everyone understood to be going on before I ever heard of this discourse) is that people are just using exaggeration for emphasis (a very common rhetorical tactic).
Of course people aren’t saying it’s literally thing-they’re-referring-to but that it has so much in common that it’s “practically” almost exactly that thing.
I feel like people overcomplicate what needn’t be complicated, sometimes (like people hallucinating a “fourth-person” pronoun to explain a convention perfectly already provided by current linguistical constructs).
I’ve certainly never met a perscriptivist who I held in higher regard than Mark Twain.
You’re referencing some rando uttering a word and claiming that its early use makes it valid, like people were perfect speakers back then?
Who’s the prescriptivist now?
The notion that “just because someone lived a long time ago, they must have been backwards, ignorant, or stupid” is one that needs to die a loud and public death. It is that line of thinking that leads people to believe that aliens built the Pyramids, Stonehenge, etc. because they are certain that folks back then weren’t clever enough to move large rocks about.
– The History of Emily Montague, by Frances Brooke, 1769 (emphasis: mine)
The use in the figurative sense isn’t valid merely because of “some rando uttering a word” a long time ago. It is valid because it continued to be utilized with that meaning for the next 250 years and is still used and understandable in that sense to this day.
They didn’t just utter it. They wrote it down, thus making it canon to language lore. 😌
Citing some historical rando is as descriptivist as it gets.
“used in an exaggerated way to emphasize a statement or description that is not literally true or possible”
Correct! It’s called a contronym, it is such a normal thing in language that they made a word for it.
People are always saying English is weird. Being willing to die on a hill for eccentric word use is one reason lol.
You’re own source states the opposite
The opposite of what? I’m curious how you interpreted my words, because that quote does not contradict any claim I intended.
I understood you claimed that the first known use of ”literally” would have been used as ”figuratively”, but in the link it says it was used in a literal sense. But I’m tired so I might have gotten something wrong.
Oh, no. I only meant that the use in the figurative sense was more than twice as old as any concerted movement against it. And even that movement is “old”. This isn’t some skibidi Ohio dreamt up by “kids these days”. It has a well established pattern of usage.
I see, that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification!