Why we misuse ‘literally.’ How ham radio got its name. District
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Grammar Girl here. I'm Mignon Fogarty, your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, roles, and other cool stuff. Today, we're going to talk about why people use the word literally when they don't mean literally, literally. And then we're going to have a fun segment about where we get the ham in the name ham radio.

I don't think it's a stretch to say the rise of people using the word literally in a non-literal way is one of the most hotly contested new word usages this century. Many find this figurative use, as in, I literally died when he said that, to be annoying at best and grammatically destructive at worst. So how does a word like literally essentially end up meaning it's opposite?

Well, the surprising answer is that literally had become much more figurative long before we got to using it the way we do today. To see how, let's look at how it's changed over time. Take a minute to think back to high school and the many assignments in English class asking you to contrast the literal or direct meaning of a text with the more figurative meaning arising from things like metaphors and similes.

The way literal is used in academic assignments like these isn't that far off from the way literal was mostly used when it first entered English in the late 14th century.

In these earliest times, people used the word literally to point to a specific type of textual reading, describing a plain or straightforward interpretation of the words, compared to a moral, metaphorical, or allegorical reading of the same words. For example, in this line from a piece by the philosopher, poet, and theologian Henry Moore, "...all those passages are not to be literally understood."

That's almost exclusively how it was used at the time. Already, though, this use in English was somewhat removed from the meaning of its etymological ancestor, the classical Latin word litera. At the beginning of the Common Era, litera specifically referred to the letters of the alphabet or to the things involving such letters.

This is how this route also spawned the English words literature and literate. These words came from early meanings that Letera developed in Latin, the idea of something containing letters, literature, or of someone who studied letters, the literate. Notice that even at this early time, those meanings were already figurative extensions of the original meaning, referring only to actual letters that Letera had in Latin.

So you can pretty clearly see how the early English meaning of literal and literally, describing the plain reading of a text, relates to the Latin word for letters. After all, a literal reading is one that takes its meaning directly from the words formed by these letters.

By the 16th century, the words' meaning morphed a little more, moving from being only about a direct meaning of a text versus deeper layers of meaning to being about emphasizing that people were being literal in what they were saying.

We can see the poet John Dryden using it this way in the line, My daily bread is literally implored, to say that he begs for alms. And philosopher David Hume using it this way when he writes, He had the singular fate of dying literally of hunger. In both cases, literally points to the direct or non-figurative interpretation of a statement's meaning, but also emphasizes its unusualness or significance.

In other words, the word literally has begun to make the literal meaning of what's said stand out as notable or come across more emphatically. And that's where we get the seed of our modern non-literal literally.

It's this emphatic sense, as opposed to its actual word-for-word meaning sense, that people use to say something was extreme or intense, as in, Squiggly was literally dying with laughter when I told him the joke about the chicken crossing the road.

Obviously, laughter isn't usually deadly, so we can be pretty sure the meaning is figurative. The word literally is just adding some hyperbolic emphasis to the description of Squiggly's reaction. If you think about it, this is actually similar to how we sometimes use the words really or truly figuratively.

When dinner isn't ready and someone says, hey, I'm really dying of starvation over here. Or when Aardvark spends more money than he should on his new SUV and Squiggly says, Aardvark truly broke the bank with that one. There's no real starvation or true breaking of the bank involved. Instead, we're highlighting intensity, not reality.

In the same way, the word very originally meant true or actual in earlier English, a meaning we still find in modern expressions like on this very day. But now its only common meaning is to a high degree in the way we use it most, as in Squiggly is very upset at Aardvark's overspending habit.

All these adverbs, like literally, have undergone a process where one aspect of their meaning, expressing intensity or hyperbole, wins out, while other or original senses fade away.

Linguists call this process semantic bleaching, where meanings are reduced, sometimes to the point that all that remains is what's called a pragmatic function, which is something like providing emphasis or expressive power to what someone says, like with the words really and very.

literally hasn't traveled quite so far down the road of semantic bleaching that it no longer gets used in the older way to mean non-figuratively, which is probably why it annoys people so much. We haven't lost our connection to its older sense, and the fact that it's newer sense seems to mean the exact opposite if its older one bothers us even more.

But in fact, many words in English have evolved over time to mean something quite contrary to their original meaning. Soon once meant immediately. Nice once meant ignorant. And awful no longer means being full of awe, but rather full of something not so good. Some words still retain their two contradictory senses in modern use, too.

For example, clip can mean either cut off or attach. You can clip the ends off some branches, or you can clip two pieces of paper together. Cleave is the same way. You can cleave things apart, but people can also cleave to each other. In both cases, it's the context that makes all the difference, and listeners rarely have trouble figuring out the meaning.

Likewise, literally can be about the meaning of the words themselves, or it can be a way to express hyperbole or intensity, and context makes all the difference.

But if this newer use of literally still raises your hackles, maybe you can find comfort knowing that even literary greats like James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Mark Twain used it in the emphatic way, without regard to its ties to literalness. And if it was good enough for them, it's probably okay for the rest of us, too.

That segment was written by Valerie Friedland, a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada in Reno and the author of Like Literally, Dude, Arguing for the Good in Bad English. A version of this piece originally appeared in The Conversation, and you can find Valerie at ValerieFriedland.com. This next segment was written by Karen Lundy.

Grammar Girl follower Dan asked me an interesting etymology question on Mastodon. He wrote, Have you ever discussed why amateur radio is sometimes called ham radio?

And I have to admit, I've never thought about the term. Is ham radio an acronym for something? Is it a nickname based on some sort of origin story? Is it a slur? I didn't know much about amateur radio operators, so my own research was enlightening. I learned amateur radio is a hobby that lets people communicate across the globe using radio waves.

Licensed operators, that's people who pass a government test to get their own unique call sign, use specific frequency bands to chat with others, experiment with radio technology, and even provide emergency communication during disasters. They are a passionate group. So where does the term ham radio come from?

Well, like many terms that emerged in the early days of technology, its exact origins can be hard to pin down. But there are a few theories. One popular story claims the term comes from a Harvard radio station run by three students, Albert Hyman, Bob Almey, and Poogee Murray, or maybe Peggy Murray? Sources vary.

According to the tale, they shortened their station name from Hyman Almy Murray to just Ham, using their initials. The story goes that when Congress considered restricting amateur radio in 1908, their station became a symbol for amateur operators everywhere. Now, it's a fun story, but historians haven't found evidence in the congressional records to support it, so we can probably consider this one a myth.

The theory with the most historical support traces ham back to telegraph operators in the 1880s. Professional telegraphers used it as a pejorative term for operators they considered unskilled or ham-fisted, meaning clumsy. Think of someone with hams on the end of their wrists instead of hands, and you'll get the idea.

When wireless radio came along in the early 1900s, many telegraph operators moved into the new field and brought the term with them, using it as a dig at amateur operators. And here's a fun sidebar. A telegrapher's unique style and the distinctive rhythm they used to send Morse code messages was called their fist telegraph.

Other operators could recognize another's fist based on the nuances in their sending technique. And this adds another layer to the term ham-fisted.

So even though the term ham started as a way for professional telegraphers and wireless radio operators to look down their noses at hobbyists, amateur radio enthusiasts took ownership of the word. By 1920, they were proudly calling themselves hams in their publications and communities. It's hard to pick on someone using a name they've adopted for themselves. Now, there's a regional variation of the ham radio origin story, too.

In Australia, some operators say HAM stands for Hobby Amateur. But this isn't exactly related to the etymology of the term. It's what language experts call a backronym, where people create a clever phrase to match the letters of an existing term. Think of how SOS got reimagined as Save Our Ship or Save Our Souls. It was actually chosen as a distress signal because those three letters are easy to transmit in Morse code.

There are a few more theories, but none of these have much to back them up. Some claim Ham Radio came from home amateur mechanic magazines' initials, but no evidence of this supposedly influential magazine has been found. Another theory suggests it combines the names of three radio pioneers, Hertz, Armstrong, and Marconi. But this one falls apart when you realize Armstrong was still in high school when people were already using the term.

And maybe the most enterprising explanation came from the Hammerland company. They claimed radio enthusiasts loved their products so much that ham became radio slang. There's just one problem with that. Hammerland hadn't even started making radio equipment when the term first appeared. We love to create neat and tidy explanations for word origins, even when the messy reality is more interesting.

Now, even though we've been talking about a term with historical origins, amateur radio is still going strong today. So let's go back to Dan, who asked today's question about the term. He's more than curious about etymology. He's also an amateur radio enthusiast who blogs about his hobby at kb6nu.com.

In one of his posts, he wrote, quote, I prefer to call it amateur radio myself. And even that term doesn't describe all that we do, unquote. Thanks for the question, Dan.

That segment was written by Karen Lundy, a former Quick and Dirty Tips editor and digital pioneer who's been spinning words into gold since before cat videos ruled the internet. She created one of the first online writing workshops, and she's published thousands of articles on the art of writing. These days, she leads personal narrative writing retreats and helps writers find their voice. Visit her at chanterellestoriestudio.com. And finally, I have a familect story.

Hi, I'm sharing what might be a familect. My name is Notori Moore, and my father always used to say that something was district, like not as in a noun, like you live in a certain district, but more like as an adjective. Like what I remember him saying was weird, weird, district weird, weird.

or other things using district kind of as an adjective or a directional word. I don't know where on earth that would be from if it wasn't something he made up. Weird, weird, district weird. And I'm not even sure how you'd look it up. I was thinking, how would I even Google that? Because

Because I can't think of another example, but I know he did use it in other ways with other words besides weird. So that's my contribution to your world. Thank you for all you do. Bye.

How interesting. Thanks, Notori. Now, I got really excited because I have a new reference book that I thought might be able to help. There's a wonderful resource called the Dictionary of American Regional English, or DARE for short, that documents regional differences. It's made up of different volumes, and I just got one to start with, and it happens to cover words that start with the letter D. I got the D through H volume. It's a great book.

and it had an entry for district. But unfortunately, it's not about district the way your father used it. It's about people in parts of the Midwest and South pronouncing the word district. Drat. But then, almost on a whim, I checked the Oxford English Dictionary, and it actually does list district as an adjective meaning strict, stringent, rigorous, severe, exact.

which isn't ridiculously far off from how your father used it. But they say it's obsolete, and the last citation is from 1700, and none of the sources are from famous works either, so it seems unlikely your father picked it up from a classic or something like that. I tried to check if Shakespeare ever used it that way, and it doesn't seem like it, but I'm not 100% certain either.

So, it was an interesting little research project. If anyone out there knows if this weird, weird, district weird kind of use is regional or comes from a book or movie or song, please let us know. You can call the voicemail line at 833214GIRL or leave a voice message on WhatsApp. And those are the lines you use if you want to share your story of a word used by just your family, your familect or family dialect.

You can find links to my voicemail and WhatsApp in the show notes.

And you know, I also have a free weekly email newsletter I don't mention enough, and it also always has the voicemail number and WhatsApp link at the bottom. The link for that is in the show notes too. It includes a quick writing tip, a summary of something interesting I read about language that week, a link to some random fun thing I found on the internet, and then if one of my courses is on a free promotion or something like that, it'll include a link to that too. You can sign up for that from a link in the show notes.

Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Davina Tomlin in marketing, Dan Feierabend in audio, Brandon Goetjes, director of podcasts, Holly Hutchings in digital operations, Morgan Christensen in advertising, and Nat Hoops in marketing, who's obsessed with David Lynch and Twin Peaks. And Nat, because of this, I was totally thinking of you when David Lynch died last month.

And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl and author of the tip of day book, The Grammar Daily. That's all. Thanks for listening.