สำหรับคนที่งงการใช้คำว่า literally ลองอ่านดูค่า
Paul’s English Oddities: ‘Literally’
I don’t normally fight the way English changes. I believe a language should be allowed to develop. But here’s something that really annoys me: wrong usage of the word ‘literally’.
People wrongly use ‘literally’ for emphasis. So if they are very cold they might say ‘I’m literally freezing’. They’re not actually freezing. It’s an exaggeration. It’s idiomatic. The water in their body is not actually turning to ice.
Or maybe it is! Maybe they’re stranded in Antarctica, and they are freezing to death. And that’s when the word ‘literal’ comes in. You use ‘literal’ to indicate that the words you are using aren’t metaphorical, or idiomatic, or exaggerated. ‘Literal’ means that your words are straightforwardly true.
So if you’re dying at the South Pole and you have enough phone reception for one last Instagram selfie, your caption could be: ‘I’m literally freezing’. You could then expire, knowing that you hadn’t abused the English language.
Here’s another example. There’s an idiom ‘back to the drawing board’. It means to start over again. It doesn’t mean that you’ve been working at a real drawing board and need to return to it. It’s an idiomatic metaphor. Or a metaphorical idiom. No actual drawing board is involved. People who say ‘I’ve literally got to go back to the drawing board’ are probably lying. It’s probably a desperate attempt to make people believe how real their need to start again is. They’re probably nowhere near a real drawing board.
Except that I’m a designer and I really do have a drawing board. And sometimes when I need to rethink an idea I go back to it. In that situation I'll say ‘I’ve literally got to go back to the drawing board’. I can say it with truthfulness. And I take real pleasure from an idiom that has become literal.
Please don’t take that away from me.
