Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: Rinse between each use

This phrase 'rinse between each use' appeared in text at the bottom of an 
American TV commercial. It's a mistake in logic that has become disturbingly 
common. At times I worry about some situations in which usage determines 
meaning in language. The use of 'literally' as an intensifier in a way that 
means 'virtually' has become so common that it renders the proper use of the 
word ambiguous in conversation. 

 common. 
Excuse my ignorance, but what's wrong with it?
-- 
Mary

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I suppose Tony is hinting that 'between' should apply to a pair or a group 
of entities, while 'each use' denotes a single instance.
Max

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"And the next"? And what's with "rinse after each use"?
Bye, FB
-- 
Domanda: "Era il figlio di Iside e Osiride".
Risposta: "Thor".
(quiz televisivo)

 of entities, while 'each use' denotes a single instance.
Yes. You can rinse between uses. You may have visited New York between trips 
to London, but you did not visit between each trip. 

 wrote in message
news:42FF9FAC...@spamfinito.it...
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Nothing, according to any number of sources:
"If you use double spaces between each paragraph".
http://www.mantex.co.uk/samples/gra.htm
"and a clear space between each paragraph"
http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/cms.asp?Page=/Home/Customers/JobHuntingHelp/WritingLetters
"Total weeks include a 2 week vacation period between each term "
http://www.go-study.com/uk/english.asp
"Half the lower floor is taken up by three Geography classrooms, with
concertina partition doors between each."
http://www.kegswebsite.org.uk/index.php?news=true&id=23
"speech is a continuous stream of sounds, without clear-cut
borderlines between each word."
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/pron/con_speech.shtml
Joe from Massachusetts

 word ambiguous in conversation.
I believe it happens in Italian all the same. It is a metaphorical usage,
isn't it? Would you provide an example of a sentence with "literally" you
dislike?
-- 
Enrico C
...still legal tender...

 dislike?
Here I agree with Tony; far too many people say "literally" when they
mean "metaphorically".
E.g. "I was so angry, I literally blew up".
-- 
Mary

Giň
How do you expect me to grow, if you don't let me blow?
(Rachel a Ross, Friends 2x19)

 dislike?
In the context 'I am literally melting from the heat' it is used without 
conveying a specific meaning but rather to provide emphasis to the 
utterance. The person isn't actually melting, and 'actually' is what 
'literally' means. Just as with the 'each use' example, we understand the 
meaning from context, but the words are used contrary to logic. 

 They don't mean rinse in the 
middle of a use as the sentence literally implies.  
But it doesn't.
As a UK native speaker, I really don't see a problem there.
-- 
Mary

 can't the have meant "I almost really blew up"?
No - "literally" means "in reality", not "almost".
-- 
Mary

 not "almost".
Nor in Italian.
http://www.hoepli.it/dizionari.asp
literally
av
1 letteralmente, alla lettera
- to take st literally prendere qs alla lettera
2 effettivamente, realmente, nel vero senso della parola, letteralmente
- people are literally dying in the streets la gente sta letteralmente
morendo per strada; he was literally swimming in money nuotava
letteralmente nell'oro

 E.g. "I was so angry, I literally blew up".
I don't speak english so good but I think that this sentence is right and 
coincide with the italian sentence "Ero cosě arrabbiato che sono 
letteralmente esploso",. isn't so? It's roughly like I say "Ero cosě 
arrabbiato che sono PROPRIO esploso"
It's true that is also a metaphor, but when you say literally you mean 
"really", at least in italian!
The metaphor is when you use a word normally used to indicate a thing to 
indicate another (this last sentence is puzzling, I know! :-P)
E.g. "The life is a fight", "The life is full of roses and flowers rose", 
"your eyes are a sea where I lost myself", "your skin is a peach", and so 
on.
I hope that I've wrote something of understandable :-)
-- 
I'm a Dream!!! 

Giò
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 Spoken language is not so rational and linear (lucky us!).
I find your argument quite convincing.
In other words, not all the times we use "literally" we literally mean it.
It can also be used as a hyperbole. 
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 It can also be used as a hyperbole.
Maybe this use of "literally" is considered acceptable in Italian, but
although it's commonly used in English, it's definitely considered
unacceptable.
-- 
Mary

 unacceptable.
Just to clarify, there's nothing wrong with metaphors or hyperbole,
provided you omit the word "literally".
-- 
Mary

 arrabbiato che sono PROPRIO esploso"
Ma appunto non sei scoppiata letteralmente, come se fossi una bomba.
E come dire "la musica era cosě forte che mi ha letteralmente spaccato i
timpani". Ovviamente non hai veramente i timpani spaccati.
-- 
Mary

 on it.cultura.linguistica.inglese :
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On what grounds, exactly?
I gather the problem is it's been long overused. 
If that is the case, the same happens in Italian with "letteralmente".
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/literally.html
Like "incredible", "literally" has been so overused as a sort of vague
intensifier that it is in danger of losing its literal meaning. It should
be used to distinguish between a figurative and a literal meaning of a
phrase. It should not be used as a synonym for "actually" or "really".
Don't say of someone that he "literally blew up" unless he swallowed a
stick of dynamite.
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 stick of dynamite.
Is it possible to swallow a stick of dynamite? This reminds me of an
instalment of E.R.: a young female doctor wondered how a patient could have
swallowed a carrot, and another doctor explained to her that he hadn't.
(smiling face)
Bye, FB
-- 
Conversation like television set on honeymoon: unnecessary.
(Murder by Death)

 spaccato i timpani". Ovviamente non hai veramente i timpani spaccati.
Certamente, ma quando dici "letteralmente" non intendi dire che stai usando 
una metafora. Nei tuoi esempi, in effetti il "letteralmente" stride con la 
"non veridicità" degli eventi. Ma potresti dire anche, ad. es., "mi ha fatto 
così arrabbiare che lo avrei letteralmente preso a pugni" o "quella musica 
mi manda letteralmente in estasi".
Boh, però in effetti, ripensandoci mentre sto scrivendo, "letteralmente" si 
usa più spesso usando un modo di dire metaforico... In questo in effetti 
forse hai ragione... Però il punto, imo, è che dicendo "letteralmente" 
intendi dire "davvero" a prescindere dall'uso della metafora. Non so se mi 
sono spiegato.
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One could venture to say that "literally" stands there to suggest that a 
metaphor should not be construed as an hyperbole but as a "literal" 
metaphor. Not sure if I'm being clear.
Max

It can also be used as a hyperbole. 
Yes.
I myself many times intentionally say a thing meaning even the exact
opposite. Call it irony, if you will.
I have also found that in literature it happens many times.
After all, the sentence provided by Mary comes from the real world,
not from high literature. I.e. it's a sentence mutuated from the
spoken language. It could have been quoted by a direct speech, in a
novel. Or used as weel in an informal issue.
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> I find your argument quite convincing.
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It's not even considered acceptable in Italian, at least not by
everybody, and of course not in all contexts.
I find it a little difficult sometimes to make myself clear of what I
am meaning when I am saying what I am saying.
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> Maybe this use of "literally" is considered acceptable in Italian, but
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What's so special about that?
PS I am sorry to reply to all the messages all of a sudden. I wouldn't
want it to seem "irrespectful" (I can't figure out the exact word,
this is something close enough)
bye
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I gather the problem is it's been long overused. 
yes, that's it.
we're getting annoyed by it. like the Italian journalism summer time
lexicon: "esodo", above all.
What "exodus"!? .... Enough of it. 
Can't they say it with a different word? Let's say..."spostamento in
massa"?
Or like the word tsunami or "esondare". It looks just like as soon as
they discovered those terms, the started to used only them.
What about "maremoto" and "inondare"?
Pardon me for the outburst.
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(smiling face)
I remember that :-)))
Anyway, an old joke about possibile ER situations...
The worst one is the one about "penis captivus"...
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"non veridicità" degli eventi. 
Il che potrebbe essere essa stessa un figura retorica.
Almeno, io la vedo così.
Ossia il fatto che la logica stride così tanto con il significato
letterale (passami il termine) della frase (di "letteralmente", in
questo caso), è appunto fonte di un significato dietro il significato.
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 Pardon me for the outburst.
Understandable! :)
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 questo caso), è appunto fonte di un significato dietro il significato.
Ma sei Enrico Ghezzi sotto mentite spoglie?
Ciao, FB
-- 
"It sounds appalling!"
"Interesting and appalling. The others just sound appalling!"
(Cold Comfort Farm, the film)

 wrote in message 
news:pH5Me.18533$HM1.5...@twister1.libero.it...
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This is the problem : 'literally' is used so often to introduce a metaphor 
that it is no longer available to be used in its true sense ; that's why 
people say it's not acceptable . Why do people use it like that (after all , 
if you're using a metaphor , what does it add?)? The answer is that it is 
used with tired or cliched metaphors - if you used an original or forceful 
metaphor , you wouldn't feel the need of it , but it's used to try to beef 
up dead metaphor .'Melting with heat' or 'exploding with anger' are so 
commonplace that people feel the need for something more , and the use of 
'literally' in such cases has itself become a cliche .
I don't agree with Max that a usage can't be 'common' and 'thought 
unacceptable' at the same time (though in time what's common may have to be 
universally accepted ) ; language , it is true , is defined ultimately by 
usage not rules , but it is by no means true to suppose that all change is 
for the better ; if a linguistic trend tends to reduce the expressive range 
or capabilites of a language , then anyone interested in that will naturally 
find it 'unacceptable' ; their views may not prevail , in which case the 
language is impoverished . Wherever words like , say , 'uninterested' and 
'disinterested' have become interchangeable , then the language has lost a 
possibility of discrimination which it once possessed .
Those of us who object to this increasingly common use of 'literally' do so 
on the grounds that it is a cliche , and that it reduces the possibilities 
of the language .
Mike
Mike 

flood, to inundate) is trans., and their meaning is slightly different :)
it doesn't matter. it the principle that counts.
:-))
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Giň
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 questo caso), č appunto fonte di un significato dietro il significato.
Sono d'accordo.
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 metaphor. Not sure if I'm being clear.
I would agree that you have to be careful which words you use for hyperbole. 
The problem with using 'literally' as an intensifier is that it creates 
ambiguity. For example, if I say 'I'm literally melting from the heat' you 
know that the usage is just hyperbole because it would be hard to imagine 
people reconstituting themselves after melting, even if melting itself were 
imaginable. However, if I say 'My beer bottle literally melted from the 
heat' you have to ask yourself whether I'm careful enough about language to 
mean what I say or if I'm indulging in hyperbole. The bottom line is that 
language is for communicating and I think we should strive for clarity in 
communication. It's the same reason why any editor I have known would 
probably change 'between' each use' to 'between uses' or 'after each use'.