Dictionaries change: This is literally the end of the English languageThe linked article discusses the changing meaning of "literally," in online dictionaries. Which got me thinking. Is the online dictionary meaning world different than the old days? Not professors and madmen engaging in leisurely correspondence over years, but I envision slackers and programmers, in the midst of pizza boxes and coke cans, deciding on meaning:
"Dude, like I am literally dead from those brownies."
"Wait, dude we've got to update some new definitions before you crash."
"Dude, like really? I am literally gonna barf if I look at one more word."
"Hey wait dude I've got an idea..."
Is it a good thing or bad that online dictionaries now are probably updated more frequently that in years past? After all, if the meanings are changing at a faster rate, shouldn't the tool to track meaning be accelerated as well?
When I googled (new word!) "how do online dictionaries get their definitions?" for insight, I found this article.
'That recovery, the first day at Weatherend, had served its purpose well, had given them quite enough; so that they were, to Marcher's sense, no longer hovering about the head-waters of their stream, but had felt their boat pushed sharply off and down the current. They were literally afloat together...'
ReplyDeleteThat's Henry James - literally - in The Beast in the Jungle. And I stumbled on a similar loose usage in Nabokov (Invitation to a Beheading). Two of the English language's most fastidious stylists, guilty as charged!