this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
1194 points (95.6% liked)

memes

10340 readers
1507 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civilNo trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politicsThis is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world

3. No recent repostsCheck for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No botsNo bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/AdsNo advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ImFresh3x@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

People, including many famous authors, have been using literally this way for hundreds of years.

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, but its use to mean its opposite didn't become widespread until the past decade or so.

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

People have been complaining about it longer than a decade, so you're way off there.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally

Tldr: common use in the "figurative" sense for since the 1800s.

[–] ImFresh3x@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Incorrect. People have been using it the way you are complaining about for hundreds of years. It’s a new phenomenon that people complain about it being used the way you disapprove of. I’d attribute the recent complaints to lack of literary exposure and anti intellectualism in recent years.