AND BY "TRUE" I MEAN "FALSE"

To say that the following frustration is a pet peeve is not entirely accurate. It is, however, close enough that I'll go ahead and use that phrase to describe it until I come up with a better one (it's less like a pet than a wild animal that keeps returning to my door because I feed it from time to time - maybe leaving little gifts for me, but not actually my pet). The peeve is this: the systematic abuse of the english language. I do not mean that I get upset everytime someone gets confused about grammar or accidentally replaces "accept" with "except. I am talking about a more insidious form of abuse, blatantly using words in a manner that directly contradicts their own definition. My specific example today is the word "literally." Here's the Random House College Dictionary version of the definition:

lit.er.al.ly adv. 1. in a literal manner; word for word "to translate literally." 2. in the literal or strict sense. "what does the word mean literally?" 3. without exaggeration or inaccuracy "literally bankrupt"

Note that "literally" does not mean "very." It does not mean "extremely." It is not purely for emphasis, it does in fact have a definition that restricts it to a very specific use. When you use "literally" to modify a phrase, it means that the phrase is completely accurate as stated with no metaphorical deviations. It is a way of setting apart those times when you are exaggerating from those times when that's honestly-to-um-goodnessly exactly the way things are.

In today's world, however, "literally" seems to have lost its way. People use it as a form of exaggeration, which seems (to me at least) to run exactly counter to its stated definition. It has been used as a way to take another step closer to superlative. When someone says "Today was literally the worst day of my life," they do not usually mean what they say, that it was worse than every previous day they have ever experienced. What they mean is that this particular day is worse than the days they have claimed to be the worst day of their life. "Literally" has become a matter of scale. However, like "pregant" or "dead," "literal" is a true/false word, not an indicator of degree.

I could sit here and make up hundreds of examples (literally) but alert reader Bruce has already provided me an excellent true life example of exactly the problem I'm talking about (the bold emphasis is my own):

I know how much the overuse of "literally" gets on your nerves so i thought you'd find this annoying. But if you make a mental picture it's down right gruesome: "This form of massage involves the use of heated lava stones blended with Swedish strokes. The heated basalt stones literally "melt" through stiff muscles, going beyond the physical experience of typical massage and entering a deeper dimension of relaxation, health, and spiritual well being."

As stated, that certainly does go beyond the typical massage. I don't know about you, but my spiritual well being might be significantly compromised if my muscles started to melt. Although as Bruce points out, "I'm especially amused that they use quotes around "melt" to show they mean it figuratively, even though they say they mean it literally." These people went so far as to acknowledge that they were not being accurate, and yet kept "literally." I guess it means their stones really (don't really) melt people's muscles. Sigh. Think about what you're saying people, that's all I'm asking...