“Literally” Has Meant “Figuratively” for Two Hundred Years
I literally died. Somebody objects. The objection is reasonable and the history is not on its side.
The intensifier is old
Using literally for emphasis rather than accuracy dates to at least the eighteenth century, and the writers who did it are not obscure.
Dickens, in Nicholas Nickleby: a character is literally run off his legs. Joyce, in Ulysses. Twain. Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby: Gatsby literally glowed. Nabokov, who was not careless about words, used it the same way.
The complaint appears in the early twentieth century, roughly a hundred and fifty years after the usage it objects to. This is a common shape: the outraged correction is usually newer than the thing it corrects.
Why it happened
Intensifiers wear out, and English replaces them constantly by grabbing whatever word sounds most emphatic and draining it.
Terribly once meant in a way that inspires terror. Awfully meant inspiring awe. Terrific meant terrifying. Very descends from a word meaning true — when you say very good you are saying truly good, and nobody objects.
Literally is doing exactly what truly, really and actually have already done. Each began as a claim about accuracy and became a general amplifier. The only difference is that literally is still mid-journey, so both meanings are live and the collision is audible.
The strongest objection
The good argument is not it is wrong. It is that we needed that word.
Unlike truly or really, literally did a specific job: it flagged that a phrase normally read as metaphor should be taken at face value. The building literally collapsed told you this was not a figure of speech.
When one word carries a meaning and its opposite, that signalling function weakens. English has no clean replacement — actually and really went the same way, and in the literal sense is clumsy. So the loss is real, even if the usage is not an error.
What the dictionaries record
Merriam-Webster lists both senses and notes the intensifier is standard and has been for centuries. Oxford does the same, marking the second sense informal. Cambridge records it and advises care in formal writing.
Merriam-Webster’s usage note on this became briefly famous when readers assumed the dictionary had capitulated to sloppiness. It had done what dictionaries do: recorded a usage that was already two hundred years old.
What to do
- In formal writing, keep it literal. Not because the other use is wrong, but because a portion of your readers will stop reading to be annoyed, and that is attention you needed.
- In speech and informal writing, nobody is confused. Context makes it obvious, which is why the usage survived.
- When you mean it literally, say so plainly. The building actually collapsed — I mean physically is worth the extra words when the distinction matters.
- Reach for a stronger verb instead. I literally died is weaker than almost any specific description of what actually happened.
The general shape
Words drift. They drift most in the intensifiers, because emphasis is the thing speakers most want to renew. Objecting to the drift is a perfectly ordinary human impulse and it has never once stopped one.
What you can do is notice which drifts cost the language something. This one did.
Checked against Merriam-Webster, the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook. Spotted an error? Tell us — see our editorial policy.
