Nah - that's probably what she needs to do to win. hehe - Internet's Tad

I literally didn't know the difference... - LPH™ and his dog P™

That's like when people say theory instead of hypothesis. If it sounds better, then it naturally makes sense :-P - Nick Humphries

haha, and when people use 'nonplussed' for 'nonchalant'.or 'decimate' when they don't mean 1/10th. - Admiral Anika

Wow, that is remarkable that Todd Harris wouldn't understand the English language well enough to understand that what he is suggesting is absolutely impossible. - Nicholas Kreidberg

(reviving an old thread) It turns out this is a canard. In English, literally literally means figuratively, and decimate does mean reduce. There's a good article about this here: http://www.npr.org/templat... -- that contains various quotes from Jane Austen, Alcott, Twain, and Fitzgerald using literally to mean figuratively. - j1m

I only say literally if I mean literally. And I'm not entirely sure Todd Harris is wrong about what Palin needs to do to win. :-P - John (a.k.a. dendroica)

I hear the veep say it quite a bit these days. Makes me a little crazy watching his press conferences sometimes. - Eric @ CSTechcast.com from iPhone

Heard a sportscaster say "It's literally a do or die game!" That got my attention. - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

Often, in current usage, "It's literally" is functionally equivalent to "Hear Ye, Hear Ye!" - it's simply a device to emphasize what follows. - Micah Wittman

Micah you are correct. - Karma Martell

Karma, thank you. Sometimes people hint at that I'm correct, but don't literally say so. :P - Micah Wittman

Give credit where due. :-) - Karma Martell

Is that a command Karma? If so, then, Micah, you are correct. - Mitch

Now I'll have to google-up an essay, can't remember the who or the where, but a linguist that was building a thesis for the modern use of "like" (like... think Valley-Girl 'like'). Besides literally just reading the literature, she used discussions between her teenage daughter and her friends as sampling. - Micah Wittman

She found 'like' was actually being used in a variety of modes, that it was relatively complex language phenomenon. - Micah Wittman

No. Mitch, just a shorthand, but I am sure he appreciated it. :-) - Karma Martell

If you want a great series of essays describing the perversion of English, check out "What Orwell Didn't Know." - Mitch

Mitch, I'll have to read that. You might also enjoy this essay: "To See Truly Through a Glass Darkly: C. S. Lewis, George Orwell, and the Corruption of Language" | http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/article... - Melanie Reed

this was mentioned in an episode of "how i met your mother", the one with the interventions, in the 3rd or 4th season:) Ted character would be correcting these all the time, however even since then, I guess I am using it in the wrong way.. well, at least I'm not a native-speaker-anchor-tv person:) - Neşe Uyanık