descriptivist <\/a>leanings and come across all prescriptivist about that particular topic. \u00a0Obviously, it doesn’t make sense to tack “literally” onto “flabbergasted” if one is using literally properly. \u00a0Flabbergasting doesn’t really have a concrete sense, so there’s no need to explain to everyone that you aren’t, in this particular case, talking about being figuratively flabbergasted (what would figuratively flabbergasted look like?).<\/p>\nBut see here, even if we allow improper use of literally as a generic intensifier, it doesn’t make much sense here. \u00a0“Flabbergasted” is a pretty damn intense word already. \u00a0Intensifying it is kind of gilding the lily, isn’t it? \u00a0It’s sort of the ne plus ultra of surprise already, folks. \u00a0Leave it alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was listening to the news the other day, and heard someone say that they were “literally flabbergasted” at something. \u00a0I don’t recall what had caused the flabbergastation, or anything in particular about the news story, but it got me … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar-gripery"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4qgvH-5C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354,"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions\/354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/internetmanifestation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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I was listening to the news the other day, and heard someone say that they were “literally flabbergasted” at something. \u00a0I don’t recall what had caused the flabbergastation, or anything in particular about the news story, but it got me thinking. \u00a0Is there any other way to be flabbergasted?<\/p>\n