literally
/ˈlɪ.tə.ɹə.li/ adverb
Forms lit. litterally
- adverb Without overstatement or understatement, or false or misleading words. “He's prone to exaggeration, so don't take what he says literally.”
- adverb With phrasings that might normally be used or understood as figurative: truly; not figuratively; not as an idiom or metaphor. “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.”
- adverb Draws attention to a pun or other wordplay involving an idiom. “My daughter's pet rabbit had babies, and now we've literally got rabbits coming out of our ears.”
- adverb (colloquial) Used as a general intensifier or dramatiser, sometimes tending towards a meaningless filler. “I had no idea, so I was literally guessing.”
- adverb (sometimes proscribed) Used as an intensifier with statements or terms that are in fact meant figuratively and not word for word as stated. “He was so surprised, he literally jumped twenty feet in the air.”
- adverb (colloquial) Used as a generic downtoner: just, merely. “It's not even hard to make—you literally just put it in the microwave for five minutes and it's done.”
Synonyms
ad verbum actually really unfiguratively unmetaphorically above a bit all things considered as a matter of fact by right certainly come to think of it de facto definitely de jure fact is forsooth frankly honestly in actuality in all honesty
Antonyms
Etymology
From Middle English litteraly. See literal and letter. By surface analysis, literal + -ly.
Webster’s 1913
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “literally”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details