"Literally."

Recently, an adult friend of mine told me that, while traversing the Bay Area shuttling his kids to and from youth sports competitions, he “literally drove a couple thousand miles.” I clarify that this is an adult friend of mine because the English teacher in me immediately took issue with that one word that is as persistently misused in youth vernacular as any other--“literally.” Now I know that kids are learning and developing and misusing everything from a sibling’s favorite toy to an innocuous four-syllable word. Adults, though, we know better. Usually.

I’ve wondered since then whether that word has any real significance anymore. Are we literally looking at the death of the definition of literally? Kids--and I use that term broadly to define almost anyone who hasn’t had the joys of discovering subtle to distinctive wrinkles, gray hairs, or in some extremely special cases like myself, the absence of any hair where there used to be some--use language terribly. That’s what makes them kids. They say things they don’t mean, sometimes out of an outburst of emotion, sometimes because they (ahem) literally don’t know what those words mean.

More often, though, kids know at least the emotion behind the language they are consistently growing more familiar with. What they don’t know at the time of utterance, though, is the full concept of impact. That is an important distinction. An 8-year old yelling “I hate you!” to his best friend after having a toy taken away feels...something extreme. Hate is an extreme word and even more extreme emotion. He doesn’t have the skill or experience to say, “Can I please interject here and note that the sudden manner in which you have absconded with my possession leaves me in a state of frustration, verging on existential crisis, relatively speaking of course.” One can dream, though, of such a world!

The impact of language is different from language itself. In fact, language itself can tell us much about the philosophies and perspectives of the culture or group from which it emanates.

In the phenomenon that is youth in America (and dare I say around the world), the evolution of language is apparent almost daily. They have entire conversations with words that literally can’t be found in a dictionary. They use words we know in entirely new and different ways. They create their own meaning while playing with a language we so steadfastly want to be inflexible.

But it is. It is flexible. Words and meanings change over time. Language evolves faster than we adults can keep up with. Our job, then, is to try. Try to keep up. It starts with letting go of what we used to mean by “literally,” with accepting that you can, in a way, spend two days driving a couple thousand miles to a few little league games. Literally.