Sunday, October 01, 2006

When good language goes bad

Apparently, Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner was dismembered on the field today. I know this because the commentator during the Seahawks/Bears game said, "He fell apart on the field today — literally."

Literally is one of those idiomatic expressions that has begun wandering far afield of its actual meaning. I can't entirely surmise why Al Michaels thought the word was necessary in that sentence, since Kurt Warner is very much in one piece, even if his pride and career are not. I can only assume that it was used to mean "really badly."

Another such phrase that comes to mind is fighting fire with fire. It tends to be used synonymously with give him a taste of his own medicine. It's very much not the same metaphor.

Picture it: There's a house engulfed in flames. You show up, intent on saving the building. So you whip out your trusty flamethrower...

The meaning of the phrase is that you're using tactics that will only aggravate the situation, much like hitting a burning house with fire is going to make it burn faster.

All of this leads me to one question, to which I do not know the answer: Is this definition creep part of the natural process of a living language, or is it symptomatic of something going on specifically in our country?

2 Comments:

At 11:03 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

For some reason, your title on this one gave me an image of a gang war between nouns & verbs....

Of all the liquistic oddities going on these days, the misuse of the word "literally" confuses me the most. Makes me want to yell, "You've literally just misused that word." Or be Inigo- "You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

 
At 6:13 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's most certainly a part of the living language process, and, in my opinion, a part of our country's education process. This may have changed since we were in school, but I recall every teacher from grades 2 through 12 constantly advising us to "put things in our own words," even when the words already used were really the only ones that would do. The problem with this is that no matter how synonymous two different words are, they do not, in fact, mean the same thing. This has become a big pet peeve of mine at work. Everyone complains that policy is written in vague and ambiguous (another oft misused word) terms, making the job we do impossible to do correctly. It's never worth trying to demonstrate how this is not true. What appears to be obfuscation is actually precision, and the statements made can, in truth, really not be put any other way without changing their meaning in some way.

You and I, of course, are famously uptight about language. I've just about given up explaining the difference between presently and currently. We'll see what goes next.

 

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