Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 December 29

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December 29

Replacement for the word literally

Now that literally is used even when the qualified expression is not literal, what alternatives exist to specify specifically that the speaker is being literal? Czech is Cyrillized (talk) 13:40, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Newspeak is much more efficient nowadays when it comes to confusing minds and sense, than any newspeak any Orwell could have imagined back then when he wrote 1984... Akseli9 (talk) 13:51, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

"Mal nommer les choses, c'est ajouter au malheur du monde" Albert Camus. Akseli9 (talk) 13:53, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually is probably OK for most purposes, as it's not (currently) used as an intensifier - compare "He literally exploded" (with rage), the sort of usage which is deprecated but common, with "He actually exploded". Tevildo (talk) 14:00, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I disagree. If you use the word 'literally', it means 'in the sense of the words', so if he 'literally exploded', it would be in a figurative sense. If you say he 'actually exploded', then I would expect the following paragraph to describe the cleaning up of the blood and guts, bones, brain tissue, etc. If you wish to use an alternative word, then 'he figuratively exploded' would be OK, but rather unnatural. 'He exploded in a figurative sense' would be better. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 14:11, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

With whom do you disagree? I interpreted the OP as asking for a word which could replace "literally" when the - er - actual meaning of "literally" is intended, and would agree with your intepretation of "actually". Tevildo (talk) 15:12, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Seems to me we used to say "almost literally", and somewhere along the way the "almost" part disappeared. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:05, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I think the key is the tone, tha acting that requires such an expression. There should be a clear way to see if something is said with irony or not, with or without an obvious exageration that is made for indicating how huge the subject is, the surprise is, the horror is, etc, so huge, "it was as if" he has litterally exploded, "it was as if"... This way of saying things is oral, and when it is written it usually loses its obvious sense of exaggeration. It also loses its sense when it turns into a habit, when it is said without acting the right gesture or mimic, and when it is repeated by people who don't measure wether it's abstract or not, people who don't really understand it but just repeat it because it somehow sounded good. It somehow sounded good because it was acted, because it was misplaced, because it was mimicked, but this they don't dig it, they just repeat the word, so many times that in the end it actually really loses its proper sense. Akseli9 (talk) 15:19, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I think the use of "literally" as an intensifier is limited to certain positions. If you say "he exploded—literally", I think people will still take the word "literally" literally. Assuming that they know its literal meaning at all, that is. --65.94.50.4 (talk) 22:07, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Depending on the context, "physically" might work, as in "He physically exploded". StuRat (talk) 22:16, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I can't in good conscience recommend replacing a perfectly cromulent word. If the misuse caught on with time, so can the proper use return. If it's taking a bit long to happen organically, start literally smashing it into heads. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:27, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Parsing a sentence in a prayer to Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster

I am having trouble parsing (or understanding) what the following sentence is trying to say. It is actually a prayer (to Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster). Here it is: Almighty God, through Your grace, Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso, by his exemplary virtue, built up the flock entrusted to him. Grant that we, under the guidance of the Gospel, may follow his teaching and walk in sureness of life, until we come to see You face to face in Your eternal kingdom. I am not quite sure as to what the second sentence is saying, as I don't know how to "parse" those clauses. Is it saying Version "A" or Version "B" below?

Version A: Almighty God, through Your grace, Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso, by his exemplary virtue, built up the flock entrusted to him. Grant that we, under the guidance of the Gospel, may follow his teaching and grant that we may walk in sureness of life, until we come to see You face to face in Your eternal kingdom.

Version B: Almighty God, through Your grace, Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso, by his exemplary virtue, built up the flock entrusted to him. Grant that we, under the guidance of the Gospel, may follow his teaching and may follow his walk in sureness of life, until we come to see You face to face in Your eternal kingdom.

In other words, is the phrase "walk in sureness of life" conjoined in parallel structure with "(Number One) grant that we may follow his teaching and (Number Two) grant that we may walk in sureness of life"? Or is the phrase "walk in sureness of life" conjoined in parallel structure with "Grant that (Number One) we may follow his teaching and (Number Two) we may follow his walk in sureness of life"? Thanks. I hope this question makes sense. I tried to articulate it the best I could. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 16:21, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

It's a prayer to God, saying basically, let us live and follow Alfredo Ildefonso's teachings through guidance with the Gospel and that we may walk in sureness of life, etc. KägeTorä - (^影_虎) (Chin Wag) 16:53, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

If I may follow up on your point (while remaining within the remit of RD/L) - "The prayer is to God, not to the saint personally" is wrong, as Schuster has not (yet) been canonized. What would be the correct word to use? Tevildo (talk) 17:11, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

The correct word for what? In lieu of "saint"? He (and the others) would be referred to as the "blesseds" (two syllables: "bless" – "eds") or the "beati". Those are the "technical" words for those on their way to canonization, although not yet canonized. See Beatification and List of blesseds. Or am I misinterpreting your question? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:22, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that was my question. So "blessed" can be used as an ordinary noun in this context? For example, we can say "A painting of Schuster hangs on the wall of the church", "A painting of the cardinal hangs on the wall of the church"; after he is canonized, we can say "A painting of the saint hangs on the wall of the church." Can we, at the present time, say "A painting of the blessed hangs on the wall of the church"? Tevildo (talk) 20:32, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Your sentence ("A painting of the blessed hangs on the wall of the church.") is perfectly fine. The word "blessed" correctly serves as a noun in that case, in exactly the same way that the term "saint" would. Although your sentence is perfectly acceptable, I think that most people, practically speaking, would say: ""A painting of Blessed (Name) hangs on the wall of the church." Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 02:29, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

I would say that it is joined to both: that in following his teaching we will walk in sureness of life, but all of this is hoped to be granted by the Grace of God. 86.156.148.98 (talk) 16:56, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Although both interpretations are reasonable, I would agree that Version A is better - "Grant that we may follow his teaching and thus walk in sureness of life." Tevildo (talk) 17:11, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I wouldn't say both interpretations are reasonable. the second is extremely contrived, like a lawyer trying to weasel out of a totally unambiguous sentence by arguing that it means something it could not possibly be misread as. any reasonable judge would not accept that argument. 212.96.61.236 (talk) 07:57, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

"Walk" as a noun in this context is so unlikely that I didn't even notice your Version B as a possibility. None of the meanings of "walk" as a noun seem to fit, and to me it does not match in tone either. --ColinFine (talk) 18:54, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you. But, I was thinking his "walk" as in his "path" (i.e., walkway). In that context, the noun walk seems to make sense. No? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 20:25, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, if it had that meaning. But I can't think of a context in which his "walk" would mean his "path" to me. It can mean "the whole extended event of his having walked somewhere, including the path he took", but that's rather different. --ColinFine (talk) 22:43, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I meant "walk" or "path" not as a physical location, but in its metaphorical sense (i.e., his walk through life; his journey through life). Joseph A. Spadaro (talk)

OP, I read your quotation carefully and could parse it 100% clearly and unambiguously. I thought you might ask about the flock (what flock), or about 'sureness of life'. These are not totally clear from the grammar alone. Grammatically, though, what you ask about is totally unambiguous. It means "Grant that we, under the guidance of the Gospel, may follow his teaching and may walk in sureness of life, until we come to see You face to face in Your eternal kingdom". If the author (or translator) thought it sounded or scanned better he would have written it that way. (The other way to read 'walk' if may is not repeated would be as an instruction: "(you) please grant.... and (you) please walk in surenesss of life." But this doesn't make any sense. (Though if it did make sense it would be a fine reading, for example if this word 'walk' were instead 'allow us to' etc.) So there is a SLIGHT ambiguity. Without changing the structure you can change it from a bare infinitive to an imperative. Watch:

A:

Almighty God, through Your grace, Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso, by his exemplary virtue, built up the flock entrusted to him. Grant that we, under the guidance of the Gospel, may follow his teaching and walk in sureness of life, until we come to see You face to face in Your eternal kingdom

B:

Almighty God, through Your grace, Blessed Alfredo Ildefonso, by his exemplary virtue, built up the flock entrusted to him. Grant that we, under the guidance of the Gospel, may follow his teaching and allow us to walk in sureness of life, until we come to see You face to face in Your eternal kingdom

As you can see, without changing the structure of the sentence, I made it go from obviously being a bare infinitive that follows grant, to obviously being another imperative like grant (though I had to change the verb used from 'walk' to 'allow'.)

But this isn't what you were asking. As it stands it's totally unambiguous. 212.96.61.236 (talk) 07:53, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, all. I guess, for the most part, the "ambiguity" (as it were) is whether one reads "walk" as a noun or a verb. I agree that Version A is probably what was meant. But, I wanted to clarify about Version B. Also, the idea of a translation did not occur to me, before reading some comments above. If indeed this was translated from another language, there is all the more possibility that the word "walk" is a noun (i.e., Version B might easily be correct). The word "walk" could easily have been translated from "his walk in life" or "his path in life" or "his journey through life" or such. Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 17:26, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Some nuance in a Churchill quote

I had an exchange with someone on the Internet and can't tell if they're correct or not. It was as follows. The discussion dragged on a bit with them insisting they've made a joke based on a flaw in the sentence but as I see it they're just twisting it into something it doesn't say. My English isn't flawless though. Am I missing something?

OP: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” - Winston Churchill

P1: Which is a blatant lie. I can think of plenty other types of government that are worse and we haven't tried. Ever tried making a cockroach your Head of State? Life in a Bluttocracy is hardly a life at all.

P2: Churchill's statement does not contradict yours.

P1: Blattocracy would be a form of government worse than Democracy that hasn't been tried, therefore contradicting Churchhill's statement directly because Democracy can't be the worst form of government other than those that have been tried if there are still worse form of governments that have not been tried, making Democracy not the worst form of government, other than those that have been tried.

P2: You're parsing the sentence incorrectly. It says that the other forms of government that have been tried have been worse than democracy. It does not say that all forms of government that are worse than democracy have been tried. Perhaps you fail to realise that Churchill is, in a way complementing democracy as the least bad.

The quip is deliberately expressed counter to expectation. This means that it is easy to misread it as meaning the opposite of what the speaker intended. Your interpretation is certainly right both for the literal meaning and the intention of the joke; but I'm not surprised that somebody should understand it to mean the opposite. There are other phrases, not necessarily originally jokes, which have come to mean the opposite of their literal meaning, because we find it so hard to cope with stacked negatives, especially when (as here) the negatives are not simply "not"s but semantically complex items like "worst" and "except". --ColinFine (talk) 22:48, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

You are going to get into deep waters here pretty quickly. Here is the direct quote, according to wikiquote, which gives a reference to Hansard:

Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

As far as I can tell, your interlocutor has strictly parsed the sentence correctly; Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried, and so all the ones that have not been tried must not be worse than it. However, he will come up against two problems trying to carry this argument through:

• The first is hermeneutic - it is clear from the context that what Churchill was saying is that democracy is a very bad form of government but it is the best we've come up with so far and that he wasn't attempting to make a point about how good any form of government that hasn't been tried is. This is the problem with attempting a narrow parsing of rhetoric.

In my opinion, Churchill was just using some sort of a paraprosdokian to fully praise democracy, and nothing more.--The Theosophist (talk) 03:35, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

• The second is epistemological - how do you know that a cockroach as head of state would be worse than democracy? Or that any form of government will be worse than democracy, until it has been tried? People are notoriously bad at predicting what will be a good form of government and what a bad one; indeed, there is no general agreement about whether any particular government is a good one or a bad one, let alone whether the form of government is good or bad. There are probably quite a few people who think a cockroach would do a better job than their current government. If we can't even agree on that, how can we predict whether any particular form of government will be better or worse than any other form, before they both have been tried? History is tolerably stocked with people who thought that installing them as a dictator would be better than <insert previous form of government here> and so took over. In the vast majority of cases, they were wrong. GoldenRing (talk) 00:34, 30 December 2014 (UTC)