I think you’re jumping to an incorrect conclusion. There are numerous sentences in the article (and others from NOAA) with no verb, it has nothing to do with the word literally. This isn’t a piece of literary writing, it’s abbreviated language intended for a very narrow field of professional readers. There are many examples of other professional communication that similarly do not follow normal conventions for casual writing nor conversation. Look up airline or boat pilot transcripts, or medical science papers, or HAM radio users... a huge number of niche fields that have their own sub-languages.
It’s used for emphasis, like it always has been for literally hundreds of years. The meaning has not changed recently, but it has been trendy for people to complain about it on the inter webs.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/misuse-of-lite...
Even if the meaning did change, that’s one of the neat things about language, it’s fluid and changes over time. We don’t need to blame anyone, because words changing over time is the natural state of things.
How I was taught, and how I saw the term used, seemed vastly more useful than it is now, post-Lowe.
Also, I'm not sure I agree with those dictionary company lexicographers abdicating responsibility. If they argue they're not taking a dump in language, then they're gold-plating someone else's dump.
I don’t understand what you mean or why you think they’re “taking a dump”. I’m getting the feeling that 1- you didn’t finish reading that article I linked to, and 2- you might not fully understand what lexicographers actually do. Their goal and their job is to understand how people actually use language, not to define it. Their job is not to establish any rules, nor to be enforcers or make sure people follow any such rules. They are documentarians, and as such their sole responsibility is to show how the word “literally” has been used in the past. The dictionary isn’t a set of unchangeable language axioms, it’s more like legal case law, it’s just a reference of some stuff people said.
That might be the situation for the OED (and I owned a copy of the Compact Edition, so you might believe I might be sympathetic), but dictionaries are/were also issued/prescribed to students for usage guidance, long before we heard of particular venues' style guides. We'd see term senses declared by the dictionary to be "archaic", "slang", "vulgar", etc.
Let's see those lexicographers at least exercise some editorial warnings about the most egregious evolving senses.
Also, I'd like to see some official attribution of blame to Rob Lowe, for this particular episode of the destruction of language, as part of general decline and fall of civilization.
Sprinkle emoticons throughout this thread.
They did. There are notes on the definition that are also pointed out in the article I sent you.
> but dictionaries are/were also issued/prescribed to students for usage guidance
Sure, yeah, as a reference. I don’t follow, why does using dictionaries imply that lexicographers should not document history without judgement? Notes like ‘archaic’ and ‘vulgar’ are not judgements the lexicographers invented, right? Those are historical facts that are widely agreed upon by society before the dictionary writes about it.
What exactly is the “dump” you think Merriam-Webster left on English? I’m trying to understand your point, but not seeing it.
Linguistic prescriptivism is usually a losing endeavor.
> The biggest impact appears to have been numerous fire starts. The fire agencies are still flying recon but literally dozens of new fires from the North Bay, East Bay, South Bay, Santa Cruz mtns and down to Monterey.
I don't understand the need to say "literally" there.
Until recently, "literally" was a powerful word, arguably best held in reserve for important occasions. The most recent years of popular use have diluted it.
I don't believe that "literally" was intended to be said by a speaker numerous times each day, to be a filler word like "um", nor for general-purpose emphasis, nor to express unhinged enthusiasm, nor to convey "listen to me, I am the center of the universe right now!", nor to plead "I'm actually not lying this time".
I blame Rob Lowe for this (and other things).