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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

Well not literally.

Many dictionaries now list one common use of “literally” as meaning “figuratively, with emphasis”. So literally officially sometimes now literally means figuratively.

I suspect some people are literally having conniption fits about this…

I’m sorry, but your comment mixes two different types of dictionaries. You talk about “official” meanings which would be a prescriptive dictionary telling you the way you are allowed to use a word. But the dictionaries that include “figuratively” in their definitions are clearly descriptive, presenting all the ways words are commonly used.

You can’t take a descriptive dictionary and then claim it is prescriptive.

There are no prescriptive dictionaries, at least not correct ones, for living languages.

IIRC both the OED and CED list figurative uses for the word, do you know any publications considered more authoritative than those for English? Webster too, for those who prefer simplified English.

I think French has prescriptive dictionaries (to varying degrees of success)

They have Académie Française which intends to control the language to an extent, in recent times focussing a lot on resisting then encroachment of English word and phrases, but IIRC their recommendations don't carry as much weight as many think and are often ignored even by government departments and other official French bodies.

The Académie do publish a dictionary every few decades though, there was a new edition recently, so there is a prescriptive dictionary for French even though it carries little weight in reality.

French is the only living language to attempt it to this extent, though the existence of one is enough to make my “there are none for living languages” point incorrect. It is difficult to pin a language down until no one really speaks it day-to-day (so it doesn't evolve at the rates commonly used languages do).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription#Formal...

Very few of those have official force or cover much more than a subset of language properties (i.e. spelling rules), but definitely more than the "none" of my original assertion.

"prescriptive" does not mean "have legal force" though...

> There are no prescriptive dictionaries, at least not correct ones, for living languages.

there are no 100% correct descriptive dictionaries. Any prescriptive dictionary is automatically correct.

> Any prescriptive dictionary is automatically correct.

… in the view of their compilers.

I could write a prescriptive dictionary far more easily than I could get others to accept it as correct.

If you write a prescriptive dictionary it is correct because you are dictating the norms not describing what is real.

Yes you would have to be involved with a regulatory institution first

Right, just like every law is automatically just. /s

If it's not just then change the law!

The Duden is prescriptive for German AFAIK.

Isn't this more of a cultural thing, that Germans seem to agree that it is authoritative and use it as a reference?

I'm not sure what would even make a dictionary prescriptive other than an explicit declaration that it is so or, ridiculously, a law declaring the same.

I'm sorry, can you point to such a prescriptive dictionary? People can talk however they please, and dictionaries are tasked with keeping up with the vernacular.

The "literally" ship sailed centuries ago. Sorry, but that battle has been lost. Even so-called "prescriptive" dictionaries would be categorically incorrect if they ignore nearly three centuries of common vernacular.

There aren’t prescriptive dictionaries for (American, at least) English.

But “official” is defined in descriptive dictionaries to include descriptive dictionaries.

Well, literally doesn't mean literally anymore--literally.

It never has, it always will. We've already lost a host of words that meant "I'm not exaggerating, I actually mean it": "really", "very", etc. I'm going to keep up the fight.

Since there are _literally_ people who use, and have been using for a while, the word without the same exact meaning as we both agree on... well.

Having said that, I will join you in this fight.