Originally Posted by
Ken Brown
Here is one that makes me nuts: misuse of the word "literally". Paul Sherwin has done it a lot on the TDF broadcasts, such as "if he keeps at this pace he is going to literally explode". This brings Monty Python images to my mind. Another was the late Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes, who said in a piece about Dubai that new buildings are literally sprouting from the desert. They must have excellent fertilizer.
I wood knot no watt too ad two this thred.
But to follow your drift, within the past few years *literally* everybody has started saying things like "The new (insert subject) is 5 times smaller/cheaper/colder/etc than the old version."
What does that mean??? Is the new item 1/5 ( one fifth, 20% ) of the original? Why not say the old version used 5 times the space/money/whatever compared to the new version?