If you’re a pedantic college journalist like myself (read: pedantic future English teacher), you’ve probably gotten irritated when people misuse the word “literally” to mean “figuratively,” its exact opposite. David Cross does a much better job than I ever could of explaining this stupidity, and several blogs are devoted to tracking it.
But nitpickers the world over need to be prepared for the next linguistic battlefront: “controversial.” According to the dictionary thingy on my computer, “controversial” means “giving rise or likely to give rise to public disagreement,” but more and more it’s being used as a way to give false importance to anything remotely scandalous or potentially offensive.
