"If you look at the Oxford English Dictionary, literally was first used in this sense in 1769. There are lots of examples since then, for instance Mark Twain used it in the Adventures Tom Sawyer in 1876 when he wrote 'Tom was literally rolling in wealth'.
The first known use of the word literally was in the 15th century, or the 1530s, when it was used in the sense of "in a literal sense or manner".
You can use literally to emphasize an exaggeration. Some careful speakers of English think that this use is incorrect. We've got to get the economy under control or it will literally eat us up. You use literally to emphasize that what you are saying is true, even though it seems exaggerated or surprising.
Literally is supposed to mean that the thing you are referring to happened exactly as you've described it. When you bang your knee and say “My leg literally broke in two,” you are not using the word as intended. What you mean is that it “figuratively” broke in two.
Oftentimes people try to infer a word's meaning from its context, rather than just consult a dictionary. So, it's likely that some people hear "literally" (e.g., "The tornado literally demolished the house") and think it's an intensifier, e.g., very, extremely, really, etc.
“There were 'literally' a million people there, or I 'literally' died I was so scared. When people use literally in this way, they mean it metaphorically, of course. It's a worn-out word, though, because it prevents people from thinking up a fresh metaphor for whatever it is they want to describe.
"Angry" is the most common definition for >:( on Snapchat, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
Figuratively means metaphorically, and literally describes something that actually happened.
It is believed the first spoken word was “Aa,” which meant hey. “Aa” is thought to have first been spoken by an australopithecine in Ethiopia over a million years ago.
Considering that Merriam-Webster has redefined “literally” to mean “figuratively,” I'm going with literally. Our poor language, I'm figuratively about to hurl. Agreed!
According to a 2009 study by researchers at Reading University, the oldest words in the English language include “I“, “we“, “who“, “two” and “three“, all of which date back tens of thousands of years.
Figurative language refers to words or phrases that are meaningful, but not literally true.
It's a value-neutral term absent of any inherent emphasis or largesse. Correctly, “literally” should be used when a turn of phrase usually employed in a metaphorical sense enjoys a rare moment of non-metaphorical applicability: the phrase becomes true in a literal, words-meaning-exactly-what-they-say sense.
You use literally to emphasize that what you are saying is true, even though it seems exaggerated or surprising. Putting on an opera is a tremendous enterprise involving literally hundreds of people. I literally crawled to the car.
Mother, bark and spit are some of the oldest known words, say researchers. Continue reading → Mother, bark and spit are just three of 23 words that researchers believe date back 15,000 years, making them the oldest known words.
The misuse occurs when people say things which aren't literally true: 'This book will literally blow your mind' (metaphor) or “If I've told you once, I've told you literally a thousand times' (hyperbole). It's self-contradictory.
[ lit-er-uhl-mahyn-did ] show ipa. adjective. unimaginative; prosaic; matter-of-fact.
lit., an abbreviation for literal or literally, see Literal translation.