Actually...

8/8/2012

The Dish posted about the usages of 'actually' and 'literally' today. It kinda stung. My mother tells me that "actually" was damn near one of my first words.

Jenn Doll says: "Actually is the word that you use when you're actually saying, 'You are wrong, and I am right, and you are at least a little bit of an idiot.' "

Ouch. Of course, some of you are "Literally-ists" or "Literaliy-istas." Actually, I'm glad I'm not you. [Sniiiiiiiiifff]

1 Comment

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8/8/2012 06:23:05 am

This makes "actually" more useful in my book. Most of us frequently need to at least imply that someone is a little bit of an idiot.

The surging use of "literally" is annoying. Although in some ways it would seem to be a response to the amount of inexact speech that's used—in the case of "literally right across the street", it contrasts with "like, practically right across the street" when the speaker means simply "nearby".

I'd like to go ahead and nominate "turns out"—it's not used conversationally as much, but it's lazy journalistic shorthand for "I'm about to draw a conclusion without including you on how I arrived at it".

Actually...

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