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Literally…

October 13, 2011 by asteffann

In class last week, I couldn’t resist airing my complaints about how people are always using the word “literally” to describe things that are not really literal.

For example:

“My headache was so bad that my head was literally exploding.”

Um. NO. Your head may have been figuratively exploding…or you wouldn’t be telling me this story.  I felt kind of bad sharing this diatribe with my students. I knew one of two things must be true: either they were thinking what a bore I am for being so picky (and that I should get a hobby) or they had just acquired a new pet peeve that would dog them for life.

Not literally.

Anyway, today I saw an article on CNN and was about to cry foul.  MISUSED!

Then I read the article and saw that I had (figuratively) jumped the gun.

Your dead iPhone is a goldmine – literally

(weird lack of capitalization in title is theirs, not mine)

I was expecting a story about how people could mine my information in my dead iPhone to steal my money, which does not make an iPhone a literal goldmine.  However, it appears that a dead iPhone actually contains precious metals. Actually!

Well, I don’t really have an iPhone, but now I’m thinking about how much I should really let my toddler play Angry Birds on my precious Droid.

 


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