Literally?

When someone tells me, “I literally stood in line for 20 minutes at Wal-Mart yesterday,” I think I’ll respond, “Do you mean there are times when you’ve figuratively stood in line for 20 minutes?” Or if I hear, “He literally ate 3 pieces of pie at lunch,” I’ll ask, “Have there been times he figuratively ate 3 pieces of pie?”

Or if my cousin Clovis tells me that our Uncle Corbin literally got married for a fifth time I’ll ask, “Do you mean that he once figuratively got married for a fifth time?”

Where did this use of “literally” come from and how did it explode into popular usage? It has come to rival “reach out” in banality and is running neck-and-neck with “to be honest with you” in eliciting a response from me. I am pressed to ask people who tell me that they are being honest with me about the other things they’ve told me – are they indicating that they are taking a timeout from falsehood and that I should prepare myself to hear the truth?

If “literally” means that something actually happened then am I to infer that everything else I’m told is to be taken figuratively?

“Susan, did you send that report to accounting today?” 

“Yes Bob I did.”

“Susan, did you literally send that report to accounting or were you speaking in a figurative sense?”

 “Bob, if I had literally sent the report I would have said “literally” – how dumb can you be?”

Are we using “literally” because we live in such a virtual world that we can’t distinguish between something that physically occurs and something that we imagine? Or are we using “literally” ubiquitously because the norm is to spin language and events to such a degree that when we actually tell the truth it has become the equivalent of “to be honest with you”?

I’m amused that people use language they way they pick up a cold or the flu, by being around other people and not guarding against infection. One minute Susan doesn’t use “literally” every other sentence, the next minute she awakes in a world in which “literally” is crucial to effective communication. However, unlike a cold or the flu Susan doesn’t even know she’s been infected and as she reaches out to others she spreads the infection. It would be courteous if folks who misuse “literally” would cover their mouths before speaking just as they hopefully cover their mouths before a cough.

To be honest with you the next time someone reaches out to me with a description of something that is modified by the word “literally” I think that I will go quite literally mad.