JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2263

[My thanks to Patti Digh for finding the article that started this small exploration.]

In the new world of words that is Webster’s dictionary, we find “literally” meaning something less that it has never meant since the beginning of Webster’s in 1828. Evidently the new definition is made to accommodate the slanging/slangy use of this fine word in magazines and television, and especially not-good television. 

I don’t see the need for screwing this word up, particularly when it comes to mean something completely different, just to pacify a current and goofy usage. Not having see the new Websters, I quote Dana Coleman, from Salon Magazine online, in the article that may be titled “According to the dictionary, “literally” now also means “figuratively”)” on the new definitions of “literally”: “In the first definition of the word,“in a literal sense or matter; actually. Its second definition is, “in effect; virtually.”

“Virtually” is not “literally”, which is very weird, because Webster’s is messing around with something that defines the ‘is-ness” of language, a word that tells us precisely that something that is supposed to be something actually is that something, though now they tell us that “is” = “maybe”.  

It is just a bad practice. Literally (old sense). I doubt that the OED will follow in these footsteps, unless Webster’s changes the meaning of “follow” to include things that don’t follow.