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Mind your language

After ‘literally’, is it time to start a Neighbourhood Watch for the OED?

24 August 2013

9:00 AM

24 August 2013

9:00 AM

There was outrage last week when it was found that the Oxford English Dictionary had listed one sense of literally as ‘virtually, as good as’ — in other words, the reverse of its established meaning. Pedants were literally up in arms (in the new sense). The funniest thing was that the offending entry in the OED had been inserted in 2011, and the pedants hadn’t noticed for a couple of years.

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