I AM wondering if anyone else is disturbed by the increasingly loose usage of the term ‘literally’.

This morning, on Radio 4 (if you please!) I heard a lady state that “the Euro has literally fallen off a cliff”.

Well, at least one may have done so since the introduction of this monetary unit, I suppose.

Shortly afterwards, another referred to “literally the first few years after the war”, as opposed to this period’s figurative counterpart, presumably.

Although his chief linguistic concern would seem to be with changing syntax rather than semantics, I should be particularly interested in veteran journalist and ultra-conservative English language observer Peter Unsworth’s view of such abominations.

DAVID DIMENT Riverside Court Oxford