literally

adv.

1. In a literal manner; word for word: translated the Greek passage literally.
2. In a literal or strict sense: Don't take my remarks literally.
3. Usage Problem.
   1. Really; actually: “There are people in the world who literally do not know how to boil water” (Craig Claiborne).
   2. Used as an intensive before a figurative expression.

USAGE NOTE   For more than a hundred years, critics have remarked on the incoherency of using literally in a way that suggests the exact opposite of its primary sense of “in a manner that accords with the literal sense of the words.” In 1926, for example, H.W. Fowler cited the example “The 300,000 Unionists … will be literally thrown to the wolves.” The practice does not stem from a change in the meaning of literally itself—if it did, the word would long since have come to mean “virtually” or “figuratively”—but from a natural tendency to use the word as a general intensive, as in They had literally no help from the government on the project, where no contrast with the figurative sense of the words is intended.

adv

Definition: exactly
Antonyms: figuratively, loosely, metaphorically

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IN BRIEF: Actually. Also: Practically.

To be authentic literally means to be your own author. — Dan Millman

Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The adverb has 2 meanings:

Meaning #1: in a literal sense
  Antonym: figuratively (meaning #1)
  Derived from adjective: literal (meaning #3)

Meaning #2: (intensifier before a figurative expression) without exaggeration
  Synonym: virtually

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