Thread by @AlexandraErin

No one uses the word "literally" to *mean* "figuratively*, you just don't understand intensifiers.

The word "very" would literally mean "truthfully".

"I am very tired." == "I am, in truth, tired."

If we stick to that, it doesn't signify how tired you are, only asserts that you are in actual reality, literally, tired.

Same thing with "really" - "really tired" means "my tiredness, it is real". Actually, really, very... literally. They all fit this pattern of literal meaning vs. use.

"My jaw literally hit the floor."

"You don't mean your jaw literally hit the floor, you mean it figuratively hit the floor."

No. No one ever means their jaw literally hit the floor. "My jaw hit the floor" means "I was surprised". What they mean is "I was really surprised."

But saying "You don't mean 'literally' you mean 'really'." is a silly correction to give someone because the words are close synonyms. The logic that lets them use "really", "seriously", etc., also applies to "literally".

The argument against figurative "literally" isn't based on language or logic but on magic. MAGIC. The idea that a word must embody itself. Under this thinking, the word "big" cannot be smaller than "miniscule" and the words "wet paint", once painted, can never dry.

And tellingly, while people love to pretend that using the word "literally" in a figurative sense is impossible and will literally destroy the English language...

No one ever uses the word "figuratively" in a non-literal sense. I can't imagine a figurative use for "figuratively"

If you truly believed that "literally" can't be used figuratively because "it literally means non-figuratively", you would be objecting to literally every use of the word "figuratively", as it's literally always used literally, to literally mean "non-literally".