this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Former linguistics grad student here: The meaning of "literal" is changing, and sentences like "That guy is literally 500 years old" are correct.
Yes. Ling PhD here -- after teaching for 10+ years, the thing most people consistently do not understand about language is: the dictionary does not define what words mean. Dictionaries at best are a representation of what words meant at one time, and those meanings change quickly and pervasively enough that there is constantly a non-zero* number of words for which the dictionary is already wrong.
*in actuality it's probably significantly higher than what is connotated by "non-zero"
This makes me irrationally mildly upset.
@KidDogDad
@thrawn21
How, then, would somebody be able to convey that somebody is literally 500 years old?
Do people actually use it that way anymore though? I haven't heard anybody do it in a long time.
Yeah, I haven't heard anyone say it like that in literally, like, 500 years!