My favourite misuse of "literally" came from an august editor at an august publishing house. A debut novel, she declared to a group of journalists, had "literally broken her heart". We all, of course, then made sure to steer well clear.
Not being a football follower, I didn't know that Jamie Redknapp had form in this area, however, and I'm rather impressed. I think "he had to cut back inside on to his left, because he literally hasn't got a right foot" is brilliantly surreal.
Anyway, Slate has brought music to the ears of grammar sticklers everywhere, pointing us towards an ingenious new browser plug-in which replaces the word "literally" with "figuratively" on articles across the web. ("That's literally all it does," writes the developer on the extension's site; it already has one, five-star review: "This is figuratively the best invention of all time," says a user, predictably enough.)
Slate gave it a whirl: "a quick Google News search for 'literally' turns up the following headlines, modified by the browser extension to a state of unintentional accuracy: The 2014 MTV Movie Awards Were Figuratively on Fire; 10 Things You Figuratively Do Not Have Time For; Momentum Is Figuratively the Next Starting Pitcher for LSU," it says.
Unfortunately, the plug-in is not able to spot the correct usage of the word literally, "so if you install it, you'll also start seeing the word 'figuratively' to describe things that are literally true, as in, 'White Sox Rookie Abreu Figuratively Destroys a Baseball.' (The baseball was in fact destroyed)," says Slate.
This could be a fatal flaw in the invention – but you know what? I think it makes it even better. The linguistic abuse of literally has got out of control – even the OED now includes an informal definition of literally as "used for emphasis while not being literally true". Now it is time for figuratively to suffer, starting off with the figurative destruction of that baseball, an enjoyably surreal image to rival that of Redknapp's one-legged footballer. As for me, I'm figuratively installing the extension as I write.
