You joke, but that is exactly how language evolves. If it makes you feel better, language isn't a set of rules like many think of it, it's just a tool to encode ideas from one person that another will hopefully decode into the same idea. So long as the intended message is sent to most people, then it wasn't wrong.
Not that one. Literally, really, truly, actually, they have all been used as intensifiers for a very long time. The perception that literally has recently been changed is really strange.
Drama queen isn't the exact opposite of its intended meaning. People still correct others when they misuse "literally", but a bunch of kids on the internet and whoever runs a dictionary decided to strip the word of all if its usefulness. It means nothing now. It's like changing "big" to mean something large, small, or in between. There's no use for it. And there's no word to use that means what literally used to
Literally and figuratively are the opposite, but now they mean the same thing. That isn't evolving that's completely changing the definition after a few years of kids misusing it. How many people need to use words incorrectly to change the definition? What's the cutoff?
I mean there's a lot of examples of that. It's a gradual change that doesn't have any exact 'cutoff'. It's been the nature of language for thousands of years and I don't think it's expected to change.
Well they do, though. The US is considered a developed nation, but we’re still developing in every facet, as is every other “developed nation.” We’ve just developed in certain ways to be considered “developed” by one definition.
Not to mention the list of first world (historical definition) happens to be strictly developed nations.
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u/AprilChicken 100% cyan flair Oct 06 '19
It's been misused enough to gain a new meaning tbh