Greetings to one and all with this ditty from the language columnist at the
Economist. Excerpt :
"Or take literally, on which I am a traditionalist. It is a delight to be
able to use a good literally: when my son fell off a horse on a recent
holiday, I was able to reassure my mother that ‘He literally got right back
in the saddle,’ and this pleased me no end. So when people use literally to
say, for example, We literally walked a million miles, I sigh a little
sigh. I know that James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov and many others used a
figurative literally, but as a mere intensifier it’s not particularly
useful or lovely, and it is particularly useful and lovely in the
traditional sense, where it has no good substitute."
https://aeon.co/essays/why-language-might-be-the-optimal-self-regulating-system
Season's greetings,
Tor in Poland
