Comments on: literally throws herself at men

By: rolled up blazer sleeves « manshion.

rolled up blazer sleeves « manshion. — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:02:44 +0000

[...] I’d advise against the t-shirt and rolled up blazer sleeves look.. it’s literally textbook Miami Vice, LITERALLY(ha.) [...]

By: Eliot

Eliot — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:55:58 +0000

Oh, I’ve seen this, actually! It was featured in an art museum in my area about six months ago, and the pictures turned out spectacularly.

I’m more than a little impressed that an artist featured in my podunk little town made it to the Literally blog.

By: Missy

Missy — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:55:52 +0000

And what the hell is a “performative” artist? Don’t they mean a performance artist??

By: Jon

Jon — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 05:17:33 +0000

I agree with the other posters. This usage is correct.

By: DrAstroZoom

DrAstroZoom — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:58:28 +0000

I would agree with the previous posters — this is not an incorrect usage. The speaker is differentiating a physical act from the figurative idiom.

By: BatmanAoD

BatmanAoD — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 18:53:34 +0000

This is actually correct. The word “throw” doesn’t necessarily imply the use of an arm–it can (and in this case does) mean “to propel through the air in any manner” (from Merriam Webster Online).

By: Lanny Heidbreder

Lanny Heidbreder — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 06:19:56 +0000

Okay, now I have to say something about this, because she’s not quite as wrong as I presume most of the others on this weblog are.

There are not two but three ways you can take the phrase “throw myself at him.”

The usual one is the most figurative: “aggressively make it known that I want to sleep with him” (or perhaps just “be with him”).

The literal one is “put myself in my hand and lob myself in his direction,” which is of course impossible.

But there’s a middle definition, which is not as figurative as the former, but not as literal as the latter: “Propel my body towards him as though I had been thrown.”

Is it literal? No. But it is decidedly more literal than the typical definition. In cases like this, I find “literally” to be perhaps not quite correct, but at the very least extremely more acceptable than the usual offense.