On the Use and Misuse of "Literally"

The wise Marshall Hunt and I have, on occasion, discussed the misuse of this problematic word. The questions preposed: have years of misuse altered its meaning for the greater public? Is it slang? We have also seen this with words like, "random". Marshall noted that it is a peeve of his when people use "random" as a sort of catch-all adjective describing any sort of unexpected circumstance. He claims that, while unexpectedness is a quality of a random event, not all unexpected things are truly random.

Popular misuse of "literally" has been similarly appropriated in American neo-descriptive language. Yet, where "random" succeeds in a slang context, "literally" fails. This is because when misused, it is, by definition, used in a directly contradictory way. So why is it so frequently misused? Most people could probably tell you its true definition, yet that hasn't prevented this phenomenon.

Perhaps it is because "literally" is now used to create emphasis on a predicate rather than clarify it. For example: "I was so hungry, I literally could have eaten a horse." Here, "literally" is meant to intensify the degree of hunger, as if the (ironically) figurative expression wasn't sufficient, rather than to mean with certainty that one could truly consume an entire horse from extreme hunger. Marshall and I have agreed that the word "literally" owns certain phonetic and linguistically prosodic properties that instigate this error.

1. It has four syllables with the stress occurring on the first, like other emphatic words, "seriously" and "actually". Three syllable emphatic words like, "totally" and "honestly" also contribute.

2. It ends in "ly", giving it an adverbial quality. Adverbs are used to modify actions and, while not necessarily emphatic, may offer a sense of stress or urgency. "We ate quickly.", "She drove speedily about town."

Considering this, it is easier to see why "literally" is misused with such frequency. Still, I prefer its literal definition.