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Literally, too big a fuss about nothing

A further invitation to contribute to questions studied by the ‘Bridging the Unbridgeable’ Project at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2015

Viktorija Kostadinova
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Extract

A couple of years ago, a few major news websites, such as those of The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail, reported that the non-literal use of literally, as in ‘This book literally blew my mind’, was officially recognised as legitimate usage by Merriam-Webster, Cambridge Dictionaries Online and the Oxford English Dictionary. As often happens in today's online media, the news went viral. Language users and language pundits alike condemned the dictionary addition of what they regard as an ‘erroneous’ use of the word. The only problem was that this was not really news. The Oxford English Dictionary, for instance, had officially added this meaning of literally in 2011, dating the first such recorded usage back to 1769.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Today , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 3 - 4
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

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