Taranto rides to the rescue of English.

Someone, Dig Them Up!

"For 20 years, the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps has been literally buried in the woods--small groups of young people quietly building trails, making rock steps and fixing bridges for communities around the state," reports the Burlington Free Press.

This leads to the obvious question: How can they do all these things when they're literally buried in the woods?

The misuse of the word literal has long been a pet peeve of ours (though not literally a pet peeve like when our cat walks on us when we're trying to sleep). Here's another example, from someone quoted in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (link for WSJ.com subscribers):

"People are starting to see through the façade," says Robert Orr, a retired state Supreme Court justice who runs the North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law, which filed the suit. "Incentives are geared toward literally a handful of large, very wealthy and very powerful corporations at the expense of the other businesses."

Someone has big hands! These two examples use literally to mean its opposite, figuratively. Here's a different kind of abuse, from a story in Iowa's Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier:

Almost every band member, while slaving away in the garage, dreams of one day being on a massive tour with literally thousands of people focusing on him work the stage like a possessed madman.

In this case, the writer actually means "thousands of people," but there's nothing particularly unusual about thousands of people showing up to see a successful band in concert. It's like saying, "I literally ate a hamburger for dinner last night."

The proper use of literal is to make clear that the word, phrase or clause it modifies is meant to be taken at face value rather than as a metaphor or figure of speech. You might say "Grandpa is literally off his rocker" if what you mean is that he's splayed on the floor after someone pushed over his rocking chair.

Or, if we're away from work, we might say we've "gone fishing." But on Friday we literally went fishing. Littorally, too, come to think of it.
(Thanks to Best of the Web Today.)

Once again, get your kids out of the government schools.

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot.

TAKE SOUTER'S HOUSE! TAKE SOUTER'S HOUSE!