literally

[lit·er·al·ly]

The adverb literally means "actually," and we use it when we want others to know we're serious, not exaggerating or being metaphorical.

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According to the primary and natural import of words; not figuratively; as, a man and his wife can not be literally one flesh.

Adverb
(intensifier before a figurative expression) without exaggeration; "our eyes were literally pinned to TV during the Gulf war"

Adverb
in a literal sense; "literally translated"; "he said so literally"


adv.
According to the primary and natural import of words; not figuratively; as, a man and his wife can not be literally one flesh.

adv.
With close adherence to words; word by word.


Literally

Lit"er*al*ly, adv. 1. According to the primary and natural import of words; not figuratively; as, a man and his wife can not be literally one flesh. 2. With close adherence to words; word by word.
So wild and ungovernable a poet can not be translated literally.

According to the primary and natural import of words; not figuratively; as, a man and his wife can not be literally one flesh.

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Usage Examples

From as long as, literally as far back as I can remember I've liked puns, word jokes, I can literally recall looking at a comic at the age of six or seven and I remember what I enjoyed and what it was precisely and how the joke worked.

Being a mother is the best thing that ever happened to me. Before you have your first baby you are a girl and then you become a mother. There is no transition into being a woman you literally become a mum and being a mum means you always love someone else more than yourself and it is an unexplainable situation.

I borrowed my friend's car the other day in an attempt to persuade my husband that we needed a car and literally this is true, in the first day of borrowing the car, I got three tickets and I rear-ended it.

All non-incumbent campaigns promise hope and change, but Obama took the promise to a new level of absurdity. He suggested that a vote for him would literally transform the Earth.

Frankly, the reason I joined MENSA is because I was dating a guy at the time who spoke five languages and could solve a Rubik's Cube literally with his eyes closed because it's just an algorithm.

'Hamlet' is one of the most dangerous things ever set down on paper. All the big, unknowable questions like what it is to be a human being the difference between sanity and insanity the meaning of life and death what's real and not real. All these subjects can literally drive you mad.

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.

Misspelled Form

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Other Usage Examples

Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times, which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You literally mold the experience the way you want. It's therapy.

For the first time in the history of mankind, one generation literally has the power to destroy the past, the present and the future, the power to bring time to an end.

Great Britain had a much different situation than we do and did here in the United States, in that they had literally thousands of infected animals with human health risks. Their infectivity in this disease happened before very much was known about it.

Although Bill Finger literally typed the scripts in the early days, he wrote the scripts from ideas that we mutually collaborated on. Many of the unique concepts and story twists also came from my own fertile imagination.

A concerted effort to preserve our heritage is a vital link to our cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, and economic legacies - all of the things that quite literally make us who we are.

Cagey trial lawyers have figured out there's a pretty good likelihood their case - no matter what its merit - will literally get its day in court because of favorable judges.

Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I'm not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It's the one thing you do not ever do. You've got to have standards.

God has ways of shaking the world when He is at work. He literally caused the ground to quake when Jesus died on the cross.

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