What does "literally" mean?

[v0031]

Jan 1, 1946:
Hidden Japanese surrender after Pacific War has ended
An American soldier accepts the surrender of about 20 Japanese soldiers who only discovered that the war was over by reading it in the newspaper.
On the island of Corregidor, located at the mouth of Manila Bay, a lone soldier on detail for the American Graves Registration was busy recording the makeshift graves of American soldiers who had lost their lives fighting the Japanese. He was interrupted when approximately 20 Japanese soldiers approached him—literally waving a white flag. They had been living in an underground tunnel built during the war and learned that their country had already surrendered when one of them ventured out in search of water and found a newspaper announcing Japan's defeat.

[Mechaman]

Oh hello good sir!  That's a good question!

"Literally" means that you should take every word at it's dictionary definition.  So I say something like "there were literally five guys with shotguns at the ranch" that means that there were actually five guys at the ranch with shotguns!  If I said that there was literally a psychopath at the bank, it's probably not a good idea to go to the bank because you might get blown away!

Does that help?

[morgieb]

Literally means that it actually is happening. Different from figuratively which is basically a metaphor.

Come on, you're an English teacher...

[v0031]

Literally means that it actually is happening. Different from figuratively which is basically a metaphor.

Come on, you're an English teacher...

Thanks. Could you please find some pictures about this surrender?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It should be noted that a lot of people use 'literally' as an intensifier. This is controversial, to say the least, not only among grammarians but in the general public in English-speaking countries.

[Lief 🗽]

Anyone who opposes the use of literally as an intensifier is literally a prescriptivist monster.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

The term literally is misused very often, so be aware.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Anyone who opposes the use of literally as an intensifier is literally a prescriptivist monster.

The English language has more than enough intensifiers as it is. There are nowhere near as many words that mean what anything close to what 'literally' means. Anybody who uses literally as an intensifier is figuratively the cancer that is killing our mother tongue.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I agree with Nathan completely on this.

[Oak Hills]

I agree with Nathan completely on this.

[Oakvale]

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anybody who uses literally as an intensifier is figuratively the cancer that is killing our mother tongue.

Except that this 'controversial' usage of 'literally' is not exactly new (and not just in spoken English but in written English, haha, even some formal written English at that). And even if it was, what would be the problem? I mean, seriously now. The meaning is clear enough, and the purpose of language is to communicate. This sort of linguistic extremism is generally an attempt to impose prestige dialects on the majority of the population (in all Anglophone countries) who do not speak the relevant prestige dialect. Or, failing that, to shame them into an understanding that they are indeed social inferiors.

[courts]

i might agree al except as has been pointed out, its totally redundant. there's literally no point to having it used that way

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

[Sol]

Literally as an intensifier makes total sense, particularly since words like "very" get kind of bleached of their meaning with overuse.

Anyway, what's good in language is defined by usage- literally is used by a very large number of people (although if it was just one small town or something, it would still be ok) and is thus perfectly reasonable.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

[Warning: This post is to an extent self-indulgent because the conversation is going into areas in which I am sensitive and have a lot of personal history.]

On further reflection I'd certainly be willing to admit that that's true in speech--the sense gets across, after all, and while these things tend to annoy me I admit that the part of my post that Al is quoting was excessive hyperbole--but in writing I think it's at least somewhat more reasonable to value a certain degree of precision. Overusing 'very' in writing bothers me exactly as much as using 'literally' as an intensifier, and for this exact reason. (Mark Twain once advised writers who overused 'very' to replace each instance with 'damn'. The instances would be removed in the editing process, and the sentences would read exactly as they ought to.)

That's my, somewhat revised, position on this (which I think can be extended to prescriptivism in general; it's wrongheaded as applied to speech but has some merit in encouraging precise writing), but because the accusation of attempting to enforce a prestige sociolect is more accurate than I would generally like to admit I would like to mention how and why I came to have first instincts that are as superciliously prescriptivist as my original post was. As someone who had people attempt to drill my original dialect--which, like many things about my life, combined elements of urban Northeastern Italian-American and backwoods Swamp Yankee--out of me under the guise of 'speech therapy' in late childhood when I moved away from the area in which I originally lived, I have a complicated personal relationship with these sorts of questions. A lot of my opinions about English grammar and usage are, I admit, hence matters of strongly personal aesthetic preference that have almost nothing to do with any legitimate branch of linguistics at all, and my aesthetic views on such issues are influenced by my younger self having compromised and defended my way into a somewhat elitist understanding of the nature of communication. In addition to differences between speech and writing I'm generally stridently descriptivist about pronunciation despite having a lot of prescriptivist pet peeves about usage, because usage was generally the level on which I conceded (or had spoken and written in a 'refined' way in the first place) whereas pronunciation was something whose distinctiveness I was less willing to let go. I've ended up code-switching a lot.

It's also, on a level beyond any of the above, probably hypocritical of me to be concerned about this since I'm strongly in favor of using 'they' as a singular.

Anyone who opposes the use of literally as an intensifier is literally a prescriptivist monster.

The English language has more than enough intensifiers as it is. There are nowhere near as many words that mean what anything close to what 'literally' means.

...and that is why it works so well as an intensifier. I cringe a bit when I hear it used this way but it rarely fails to get my attention.

That's a really good point.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Obviously it's not a major problem, but I don't really like the non-literal use of "literally". It's handy to have a device for indicating explicitly that one isn't speaking figuratively, and that distinct role is lost if it just functions like another intensifier. And it's not always completely clear which sense is being used if the adjective modified isn't something outrageous.

In domains other than language, we easily recognize that the combination of an innate biological system, widespread variation and continual change in corresponding non-innate behaviours, and a history of dubious snobbery-based criticism doesn't entail that no practice can be criticized for any reason whatsoever. Take, for example, food: no-one would say that the combination of the innateness of the digestive system, the continual history of changing eating habits, and the stigmatization of certain foods as low-class means that a food or a diet should never be criticized as unhealthy or tasting bad. Analogously there's no inconsistency in rejecting curmudgeonly opposition to change for its own sake while still acknowledging that linguistic changes can have advantages and disadvantages.

[Sol]

Of course, the issue with linguistic change is that it's almost always inevitable- considering the course literally has taken recently, I'd say it's transition to an intensifier is unstoppable. So criticizing is rather pointless- in a few generations, it'll mean the same thing as very. In any case, all Prescriptivism does in this context is allow for people to disprove of others based on the way they speak.

[Хahar 🤔]

i might agree al except as has been pointed out, its totally redundant. there's literally no point to having it used that way

In that case, either some distinction will be found, or one word will fall out of use. Language abhors perfect synonyms.

[DemPGH]

It's often overused or used unnecessarily, like the example in the OP, but I don't have a strong opinion about it, especially informally. If it is used as an intensifier in places that are appropriate and not too often, I don't mind it.

If something remarkable occurred and you report it by saying, "That literally happened," I have no issue with it. Okay, it literally happened, no exaggeration. In places where it could be used I often try to use a word like "actually" or some equivalent.

When I was a kid "like" was way, way overused in ordinary, informal speech. "Literally" hasn't gotten that bad, but it is approaching it.