Actually, Literally, What Your Crutch Word Says About You

Joe Biden said literally quite literally a lot last night in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. He also said figuratively, and he alluded to Barack Obama's steel spine. He also mentioned Osama bin Laden and General Motors (one is dead and one is alive, he said). But back to literally. Politico reports that Biden used the word 9 times as recorded by transcription service TVEyes, others counted as many as 10 uses. It's enough that if it were the word-of-choice in a convention speech drinking game, less hardy sorts might be literally intoxicated by the end of his turn on stage, and so it was fodder for much semantic mockery around the Internet. If there's one thing moderately word-nerdy folks (folks, he said that, too) hate, it's the repeated and possibly improper use of one of those crutch words. In truth, we hate a lot of things, but it's fun to hate crutch words.

Crutch words are those expressions we pepper throughout our language as verbal pauses, and sometimes as written ones, to give us time to think, to accentuate our meaning (even when we do so mistakenly), or just because these are the words that have somehow lodged in our brains and come out on our tongues the most, for whatever reason. Quite often, they do little to add meaning, though. Sometimes we even use them incorrectly. Almost always, we don't need them at all, which doesn't mean we won't persist in using them. Here's our list of frequently used crutches, and what your crutch of choice has to reveal about you.

Actually. Actually, you may already know how we feel about actually. I've argued that it's worse than literally because it offers up sheer attitude in place of literally's intellectual pretensions. It is literally with a slap in the face. Imagine Biden replacing his literallys with actuallys. For instance, "I want to show you the character of a leader who had what it took when the American people literally actually stood on the brink of a new depression.” It's almost like saying the American people had been claiming to be on that brink for years, crying wolf as it were, and only now, finally, did it actually happen. Actually, for once, it turned out to be true! You could read it other ways, of course, but if actually is your crutch, you are a little bit angry, maybe, and certainly adamant about making your point with a bit of a zing. You are not boring, actually, and you'd probably do OK in a bar brawl.

As it were. If you use this, which I did above, you are possibly worse than a literally-dropper. You're the most self-aware of crutch-word users, because you know you're saying something rather cliched, a hackneyed expression or at best an aging metaphor, and yet you're going forward with it anyway. The trick is that you're doing it with the acknowledgement that you already know exactly what you're doing, thank you very much. You are the equivalent of the guy with a broken leg doing tricks on his crutches. It's a crutch-word brag.

Basically. You like to cut to the chase, to synopsize, to bring things down to old bottom line of what's really, truly important. You are always downsizing, cutting the clutter, throwing out a sweater for every new one you purchase. So, basically, this is what you do. You talk for a long time, maybe, and then you sum up what you really meant to say with a basically. Everything else was just chatter, but it got you to where you were going, so, basically, that's OK with you. Basically, that's it.

by Jen Doll, Atlantic Wire |  Read more:

Photo: Jim Young, Reuters