literally go for broke
January 17th, 2008 by Fitz
You didn’t think we were just going to pick on Democrats, did you?
Rudy Giuliani wants us to go for broke, literally: his answer to the economy’s short-run problems is a huge permanent tax cut, which he claims would pay for itself. It wouldn’t.
“Go for broke” is a gambling term that means “risk everything to reap substantial rewards”.
Let me hear your arguments in the comments - is this a correct usage of “literally”?
January 17th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I think you gotta give it a passing grade. The journalist used it correctly. It even has a bit of style to it.
January 17th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Going for broke really means “risk everything to potentially reap substantial rewards”.
Just sayin’.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
True, but if there is risk then any rewards are already implicitly potential. That’s the definition of risk.
As far as the usage of the phrase: I give it a pass. It seems okay to me.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
I say that if we are *literally* going for broke, then we are simply spending money carelessly, with the aim of going broke.
The quoted text’s usage was figurative: Rudy wants us to [bet everything on his tax cut]. Thus, “literally” is incorrect here.
January 18th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Peter, you’re on he right track, I think, but coming to the wrong conclusion. I think the meaning of the term as it is normally used in gambling becomes irrelevant when one inserts “literally” into the sentence. When one does so, the reader is informed that the author is not using the phrase as a gambler would (taking a risk, with the possibility of losing everything or winning big) but the plain meaning of the words (doing something that will certainly lead to losing all one’s money). The author is contending that there is no chance Guiliani’s tax cuts will pay for themselves and that that the government will be “broke” if they are enacted. The author may be guilty of hyperbole (and his knowledge of economics may be questionable, but that’s for another blog), but he is not guilty of misuse of the word, IMO.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Does “literally” apply for colloquial meanings of words? That is, “broke” (literally) means to mean that something is broken, not just without funds. That is to say, can “literally” be applied to idioms and not be taken in the way a foreigner might understand them?
February 7th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
i think it’s right on. i think the gambling usage is figurative, so the writer makes the distinction. is it literal or figurative? rudy wants us to go for broke (using the definition of broke in this case to mean have no money — isn’t deconstructionism great?) literally, not figuratively.
the writer is saying that rudy’s idea will definitely leave us with no money, not that it’s a gamble that might end up paying off big.
February 9th, 2008 at 7:51 am
I think it’s wrong. “Going for broke” is an idiom that means, roughly, “risk a lot”, but that meaning is unrelated to the literal meanings of any of the words in it. It doesn’t have a literal meaning, so you can’t do it literally.
March 19th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Remember that our national debt is over a trillion dollars. There is not an endpoint in negative numbers. I think this usage would be correct only if the candidate were “threatening to tax us till we bleed and quit spending as a country until our national debt is zero - he is literally going for broke.”
Broke meaning having nothing. We currently have a whole lot less than nothing.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
@Calculus Dave
If the phrase “go for broke” was used to indicate the original meanings of “break”, it should result in the word “broken” instead. Since it is not “go for broken”, I think “broke” must be understood in the colloquial sense. “I am broke” does not mean the same thing as “I am broken”.
@Robin
I’m inclined to agree with you, but since the author used the word “literally”, the reader who wants to continue reading has no choice but to try to interpret it. In any case, the word literally could be replaced with a phrase that hasn’t been white-washed through misuse. Such as “and that’s exactly what will happen if he gets his way” or something more poetic.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:39 am
I’m agreeing with Robin. It doesn’t have a literal meaning, so the journalist used it incorrectly.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:28 am
Since “Go for broke” is an idiom, “go for broke, literally,” means “understand the phrase in its literal sense.”
Go (”attempt” or “head for”) for broke (”peniless”).
So, I belive the term “literally” is being used correctly here.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:33 am
Oh Kenneth, great point! If we actually become broke, we will out ahead!