Word: verb
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Most overused words. "Guts" (Gephardt), "our children" (Biden), "hard choices" (Dukakis) and "cares" (Simon's favorite verb...
...usage as described in the American Heritage example is probably acceptable. After all, the hopefully in this sentence can be used as a modifier of the verb "to get" as it refers to the subject "we." To make this clear, we can turn the sentence around, so that it reads: "We'll get there before dark, hopefully." Constructed this way, the sentence allows the subjects to hope that they will arrive before dark...
...present another case where hopefully is hopelessly wrong: "Hopefully, my money will arrive before Sunday." In this case, hopefully again modifies a verb, "to arrive" but the action refers to the inanimate object "money." Money cannot be hopeful, nor can it arrive hopefully. Most of all, it cannot arrive before Sunday hopefully...
...Seville, but Penelope Casas, in her cookbook Tapas: The Little Dishes of Spain (Knopf), speculates that it began about a century ago in Andalusia, the home of sherry. Customers in wine bars and taverns were given slices of ham and sausage placed over the mouth of the glasses. The verb tapar means to cover, so the edible lids were called tapas...
...term hopefully drew a pithy rebuke: "This once useful adverb meaning 'with hope' has been distorted and is now widely used to mean 'I hope' or 'it is to be hoped.' Such use is not merely wrong, it is silly." He gave "finalize" even shorter shrift: "A pompous, ambiguous verb." Funny was a word that should also be held at arm's length: "Nothing becomes funny by being labeled...