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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

It literally broke my mind about when I realized that I didn't need to ask for permission from anyone to start a business. That very well might have been the first consequential decision I ever made in my life where that was the case.

I think that is related to one of the fundamental mindset shifts you have to go through, and it is a bit of a wrenching one: success is now successfully identifying and exploiting features of reality, such as project feasibility and customer demand, rather than adapting oneself to match the exact published criteria of the decisionmaker who can grant success. (pg has a much better phrase for this in the wealth essay: "wealth does not come from Daddy.")

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"broke my mind". made me laugh so hard my wife and dog were staring at me like I was a mad man. thanks for the smile.

Literally broke your mind?

Be careful there, he said "mind" not "brain". And also, obligatory kxcd: http://xkcd.com/1108/

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/imgs.xkcd.com

Weird, it works from my location. (Colombia)

Yes, literally.

People flogging that dead horse fail to realize that a word has many meanings, not always compatible with it's original or primary meaning ("sad gay people", do exist, for example).

If they have looked into a recent dictionary, e.g dictionary.com, they would have read, for example:

lit·er·al·ly [lit-er-uh-lee] adverb (...) 4.in effect; in substance; very nearly; virtually.

Emphasis mine.

There's even a usage note:

Since the early 20th century, literally has been widely used as an intensifier meaning “in effect, virtually,” a sense that contradicts the earlier meaning “actually, without exaggeration".

Or section c of this OED entry: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/109061?redirectedFrom=literall...;

"c. colloq. Used to indicate that some (freq. conventional) metaphorical or hyperbolical expression is to be taken in the strongest admissible sense: ‘virtually, as good as’; (also) ‘completely, utterly, absolutely’. Now one of the most common uses, although often considered irregular in standard English since it reverses the original sense of literally (‘not figuratively or metaphorically’)."

Which is followed by examples dating back to 1769.

I won't usually leave a comment like this, but well done! That's GrammarNazi^3 (which should sound like "O. G. to the 3" in your head), and is why I originally love the Internet.

The dead horse is the word itself. Words that are mistakenly used to mean their opposites (literally, peruse, etc) so often that newer-and-opposite-meaning becomes normal, make it impossible for a careful speaker to use them at all. What's sad is that those who defend the traditional and more useful meaning are considered Nazis. You already have "figuratively". Use it. Why ruin literally?

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