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literally

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Middle English litteraly; equivalent to literal +‎ -ly.

Pronunciation

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  • (UK) IPA(key): /ˈlɪtəɹəli/, /ˈlɪtɹəli/
  • Audio (UK):(file)
  • (US) IPA(key): /ˈlɪtəɹəli/, /ˈlɪtɹəli/
  • Audio (US):(file)

Adverb

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literally (comparative more literally, superlative most literally)

  2. Word for word, exactly as stated.
    1. Without overstatement or understatement, or false or misleading words.
      He's prone to exaggeration, so don't take what he says literally.
      There are literally millions of individual pieces of space debris orbiting Earth.
    2. With phrasings that might normally be used or understood as figurative: truly; not figuratively; not as an idiom or metaphor.
      Synonyms: actually, really, unfiguratively, unmetaphorically; see also Thesaurus:actually
      Antonyms: figuratively, idiomatically, metaphorically, virtually
      Hyponym: overliterally
      Coordinate term: etymonically
      When I saw on the news that there would be no school tomorrow because of the snowstorm, I literally jumped for joy, and hit my head on the ceiling fan.
      I didn't have time to repair the wall, so I literally just papered over the cracks.
      • 1969, Allen V. Ross, Vice in Bombay, London: Tallis Press, page 142:
        Lights were going out. A raid! A raid! It was a panic, literally, in a whorehouse!
      • 1991, Douglas Coupland, “Dead at 30 Buried at 70”, in Generation X, New York: St. Martin's Press, →OCLC, page 31:
        All events became omens; I lost the ability to take anything literally.
      • 2012 May 24, Nathan Rabin, “Film: Reviews: Men In Black 3”, in The Onion AV Club‎[1]:
        […] Men In Black 3 finagles its way out of this predicament by literally resetting the clock with a time-travel premise that makes Will Smith both a contemporary intergalactic cop in the late 1960s and a stranger to Josh Brolin, who plays the younger version of Smith’s stone-faced future partner, Tommy Lee Jones.
      • 2021 January 7, Luke Broadwater, Emily Cochrane, “Inside the Capitol, the Sound of the Mob Came First”, in The New York Times‎[2], →ISSN:
        As lawmakers and staff rushed out, aides snatched the boxes containing the Electoral College certificates, making sure that the vandals could not literally steal the results of the election.
  4. As an intensifier.
    1. (colloquial) Used as a general intensifier or dramatiser, sometimes tending towards a meaningless filler.
      I had no idea, so I was literally guessing.
      I was literally having breakfast when she arrived.
      She was literally like, "What?", and I was literally like, "Yeah".
      Literally who is this?
      • 2015, “On the Run”, in Steven Universe:
        Pearl: Steven, we are not like the No Home Boys. We are literally standing in your home right now.
    2. (sometimes proscribed) Used as an intensifier with statements or terms that are in fact meant figuratively and not word for word as stated: virtually, so to speak.
      He was so surprised, he literally jumped twenty feet in the air.
      My daughter's pet rabbit had babies, and now we've literally got rabbits coming out of our ears.
      On 9/11 people were literally glued to their TV sets.
      People can't even express their opinions freely in this country any more. Literally 1984!
      • 1827, Sir Walter Scott, “Appendix to Introduction”, in Chronicles of the Canongate‎[3], archived from the original on 15 June 2021:
        The house was literally electrified; and it was only from witnessing the effects of her genius that he could guess to what a pitch theatrical excellence could be carried.
      • 1993, Wayne W. Dyer, Real Magic, page 193:
        You literally become the ball in a tennis match, you become the report that you are working on […]
      • 2017 April 22, New Straits Times, Malaysia, page 20:
        [O]ne can assume that the millions or billions of ringgit spent on the war against drugs have gone down the drain, literally.
  5. (colloquial) Used as a generic downtoner: just, merely.
    Synonyms: merely; see also Thesaurus:merely
    It's not even hard⁠ to make—you literally just put it in the microwave for five minutes and it's done.
    It won't take me long to get back, cause the store's literally two blocks away.

Usage notes

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  • Many speakers and writers object to the use of literally as an intensifier (sense 2), wanting the word to be reserved to its strict sense (sense 1), whereas many other speakers and writers do not abide by this prescription. In fact, the use of literally as an intensifier in both spoken and formal written English predates the complaints around its use in that way by several centuries. Nevertheless, it is worth knowing that if one's own speech or writing is intended to persuade or impress (for example, in formal contexts), using this word loosely tends to be counterproductive to those goals.

Translations

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