This one's long.

"That's what she said:" sometimes it's another way of asking, "Literally?"

Think about it - you could respond either way to any of the following:

"You almost poked me in the eye with that thing!"

"You really think you can go all day long?"

"He's got a really big head." (Sorry.)

"Go ahead, put it wherever you want."



That's-what-she-said montage from The Office:
(the best is the deposition episode wherein Jan's attorney takes Michael's that's-what-she-said joke literally)



A few choice lines from Star Wars:

NSFW

In some advice to a novice BDSM domme, Dan Savage tells her to put herself out there in the adult kink world, and she'll easily find someone: “You will literally enjoy beating the guys off with a stick that are gonna come on their hands and knees begging you to be their . . . mistress.”

I count three possible meanings in that sentence, one of them definitely literal.

Podcast here - scroll down for episode 58. It's toward the end of the show (some questionable advice is dispensed earlier in the podcast).

What?! I'm studying!

Is Poindexter a pollster now?

"Now you can literally bet on climate change"

Relatedly, the Dallas Morning News and others didn't mean it literally this morning when they said a bunch of big energy-sucking corporations were going to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90%.

Said corporations will instead "ensure" that they "strive" to "create incentives" to "lessen" their climate "impact" by "proactively" "seeking" "effective" "green" "solutions."

Never trust a man with two first names

From the SF Chronicle:

"Literally Pimping for (Ron) Paul"

The owner of a Nevada establishment that offers the services of sex workers has endorsed Ron Paul's candidacy.

"To those who enter into Hof's establishment and declare that 'I'm pimping for Paul,' Hof will bequeath the services of two bunnies for the price of one. Or double whatever they choose to partake of there. Some of you know the drill."

The lucky journalist assigned to this story asked the proprietor "what's stopping anybody from just coming in and saying that they're Paul Pimps just to double their pleasure?"

The proprietor replied, "Oh, I'm sure that some peoeple [sic] will do that. That's OK, it will all work out in the end."

Is he still being literal?