this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
657 points (89.0% liked)
memes
18399 readers
2251 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Literally was being used as an intensifier in both cases where it was being used to signify the truth of something and in the absurdist manner. So, no, it didn't lose all meaning. So long as you're not emphasizing something too absurd to be considered real, the original meaning still holds. And if someone uses the word to emphasize something that could be real, though unlikely, they'll likely get the appropriate follow-up.
On the Crescendo one, do you also get mad about forte? Cause basically the same thing happened there. And no one will confuse the music term for the colloquial term in either case.
I hadn't really thought about forte, but now that you mention it, yeah, that one pisses me off, too. Thinking about it, I do avoid using that term.
And Literally is supposed to mean that some thing is truly as described, to differentiate between exaggeration. So when it is used as exaggeration, it causes the sort of confusion that means exactly what the literal meaning is literally supposed to avoid.
Heaven forbid someone use a colloquialism! How will they ever be understood?
(For the sake of clarity I feel I must point out that I do not believe Heaven should, in fact, forbid such a practice. I fear without this clarification my first sentence is impossible to understand.)
You shouldn't use religious slang in your writing, it offends the Puritans.
"Heaven" originally meant "the visible sky" so this is fine.