FACT: 90% of divers give up just before finding something really neat in an underwater cave
You took it further than I would. I’d listen to the sign these days, but there was absolutely a time that, that sign would have just been a challenge.
Edit: for you grammar nerds. Do I need that comma? It seems like it should be there, but it also seems superfluous at the same time.
With the “that, that” the comma helps, but you actually don’t even need the second that for that sentence to make grammatical sense.
I feel like if they replaced the first “that” with “when” it would read smoother. “…a time when that sign”
Farther is the correct word, and has been confused with further for so long (over a hundred years), that they both mean exactly the same thing nowadays, so not sure why people are taking issues with it.
Unless I’m missing something?
I don’t see any comments of people taking issue with it. But words do mean things, and some people like to speak with precision.
Words apparently don’t mean things anymore, Merriam Webster added a new definition for “literally” this year
Language is a complex and nuanced subject, but it often helps to remember that “all words are made up.”
Idioms and hyperbole are both used extensively in language to imbue feeling to statements, most people would roll their eyes at someone who interjects with a “there’s no actual evidence that boredom can be lethal” or a “I highly doubt that vendor would accept human limbs as payment,” but somehow lots of people stan for “literal” snobbery.
If it makes you feel any better, you can think of it as a homophone from the same root: “in a manner related to literature,” speaking to artistic yet inexact use of words in a sentence.
Merriam Webster is a descriptive dictionary. They don’t tell you how words “should” be used, they say how words are used.
Using literally as an intensifier goes back literal centuries. The earliest written citation we’ve found of that usage goes back to 1769. It can be found everywhere from Dickens to Brontë.
It’s also hardly the first word to go on a similar path towards becoming an intensifier. Very originally meant “genuine”, really meant “in fact”, absolutely meant “completely”, etc.
But who complains about sentences like “I was really bored to death”, or “I was absolutely rooted to the ground”? Does saying “it’s very cold” just mean “it is a genuine fact that it is cold”?
Literally still means what it means. You can’t use literally to mean “yellow”, for example. People aren’t generally confused when they come across the word.
