“It makes me mad when people say ‘literally’ when they mean ‘figuratively’ as it does sound stupid and confusing,” a poster on Quora wrote recently. “Is this normal?” In the replies, the top answer is ...

Few words so rile language purists as the use of the adverb “literally” in a figurative sense, as in, “That movie literally blew my mind.” But as a linguist who studies how English has changed over ...

I often figuratively bristle at George Will’s conservative political columns, but I enjoyed his 8/1 discussion of words like “vibes,” “massive,” “iconic” and “unique,” whose meanings have ...