literally

Adverb

literally (comparative more literally, superlative most literally, abbreviation lit.)

1. Without overstatement or understatement, or false or misleading words.
   • He's prone to exaggeration, so don't take what he says literally.
   • There are literally millions of individual pieces of space debris orbiting Earth.

   Synonyms:

   ad verbum

2. 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.
   • I didn't have time to repair the wall, so I literally just papered over the cracks.

   Synonyms:

   ad verbum, actually, really, unfiguratively, unmetaphorically, above a bit, all things considered, as a matter of fact, by right, certainly

   Antonyms:

   figuratively, idiomatically, metaphorically, virtually

3. 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.
   • What literally broke the ice that first night was when a 98-year-old retired professor spoke up. “Well, I have a choice of what to think about when I have insomnia at night. Being a lover of mathematics, last night when I couldn't sleep, I decided to calculate the tonnage of ice I delivered as a...2013 March 27, Melanie Kloetzel, Carolyn Pavlik, editor, Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces, University Press of Florida, →ISBN, page 341

   Synonyms:

   ad verbum

4. (colloquial) Used as a general intensifier or dramatiser, sometimes tending towards a meaningless filler.
   • I had no idea, so I was literally guessing.
   • I was literally having breakfast when she arrived.
5. (proscribed, sometimes) 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.
   • On 9/11 people were literally glued to their TV sets.
6. (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.
   • It won't take me long to get back, 'cause the store's literally two blocks away.

   Synonyms:

   merely, barely, but, just, no more than, nothing but, only, simply