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.
