INCORRECTLY
CORRECTED

Does the following sentence make you want to bang your head against a wall? “I literally died because I could of cared less.” It contains three of the most controversial words and phrases in English today. Which are right, and which are wrong? The answers may surprise you.

 

LITERALLY

The primary definition of “literally” is “actually.” Both words can be used to add emphasis to a point: “There are literally thousands of fans on Uncle John’s Facebook page.” There really are thousands, so that sentence is accurate. But a lot of grammar nerds would tell you this sentence is wrong: “He literally glowed.” He glowed? Like a light bulb? That’s impossible.

Is it? Tell that to F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote the line in The Great Gatsby a century ago. And he’s not alone: Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, James Joyce, and other literary greats also used literally in a figurative sense. The editors at Merriam-Webster are quick to point this out when critics complain that the dictionary is killing the word by including this secondary definition: “in effect, virtually.”

According to Merriam-Webster, “There is…a strong impulse among lexicographers to catalog the language as it is used, and there is a considerable body of evidence indicating that literally has been used in this fashion for a very long time.” Literalists (a term we just made up) may then ask, “Without literally, what word do we use?” Answer: in addition to actually, there’s really, truly, completely, precisely, genuinely, legitimately, and many more.

End note: The meanings of words change more often than you might think. Take “fantastic” (from the French fantastique), which originally meant “something conceived via imagination” (like a fantasy), but for whatever reason, people kept using the word incorrectly, and now it means…fantastic.

 

I COULD CARE LESS

Grammar nerds who foam at the mouth upon hearing “could care less” may be forgetting a few key points about common colloquial expressions, or idioms. First, these expressions aren’t necessarily coined; they come about organically and can be in use for many years before someone writes them down. Second, idioms don’t have to be logical. For example, “head over heels” should mean upright, not upside down…but upside down is what you picture when you hear “head over heels.” Or how about the idiom “meteoric rise”? Do meteors rise? Don’t they fall?

Humans are the only animals that have chins. No one knows why.

The phrase “I could care less” means you don’t care much at all. The original version—“I couldn’t care less”—came from Great Britain around 1900. Taken literally, it means that you care so little about something that there’s no smaller amount of caring possible. “Could care less,” however, implies that you do care—at least a little bit. The American version, a variant that dates back to the 1960s, is meant to express sarcasm, like the Yiddish expression “I should be so lucky.” For example: “Uncle Joe wants to visit for two weeks? I should be so lucky. And he’s bringing his bottle cap collection? I could care less.”

So both could and couldn’t are acceptable; it’s up to you to decide which one works best for your particular situation. But if you go with “could” and someone screams “couldn’t,” tell them you could care less, and then they will probably care even more.

 

COULD’VE, WOULD’VE, SHOULD’VE

These are contractions of “could have,” “would have,” and “should have,” so when speaking, there’s nothing incorrect about pronouncing it “could’ve.” Some people believe that’s incorrect, though, because they think it’s a verbalization of a common misspelling of the phrase as “could of.” It’s not. When speaking, “could’ve” is acceptable, but spelling it out as “could of” is simply wrong.

 

BONUS: TWO MORE “INCORRECTIONS”

•Don’t start a sentence with a conjunction: Though some may scoff at starting a sentence with “and,” “but,” or “so,” there’s no rule against this. But there is a rule against adding a comma after the preposition. This is incorrect: “But, I told him not to go in there after John.” You would only keep that comma if there was a dependent clause, as in “But, and I shouldn’t have to say this, I told him not to go in there after John.”

•Don’t end a sentence with a preposition: This was a common complaint of stodgy editors in the 19th century, who would rather we all talk like Shakespeare, but this has never, ever been a rule of grammar. Sometimes you need that ending preposition. Otherwise, how would you be able to ask John what he has to go on?

Yoda was going to be named Minch Yoda, until George Lucas decided that Yoda sounded better without the Minch.