If you literally cannot handle people using this word … read on

Overheard on a tram: “My kids and their mates use it all the time – it’s ‘literally’ this and ‘literally’ that and I’m literally going insane”.

So why all the fuss over this one simple little word?

Once an expression gets under people’s skin, as this word clearly has, it seems to pop up everywhere, and the accusations of overuse and misuse are rife.

Certainly, the typical way “literally” is used these days might appear nonsensical. When people literally explode with laughter, it’s clearly not meant to be understood in its literal sense (nobody exploded).

Literally holds both meanings “not figuratively” and “figuratively” and is a contranym – a word with two opposite meanings. Not an ideal situation, you might be thinking, but English is full of words with contradictory meanings.

To dust something can either mean to wipe off dust, or to sprinkle with dust. Seeded means “with seeds” but also “without seeds”. A blunt instrument is dull, not sharp, but a blunt comment may be pointed, and quite sharp. To luck out can mean either to be in a lucky or an unlucky position.

Opposite meanings usually co-exist peacefully because context is enough to make the meaning clear. Only occasionally are there problems. In the case of “luck out”, for instance, the unlucky sense is beginning to dominate because humans are doomsters.

They are also great embellishers – our brains respond to extremes, and our social lives abound with ways of attracting attention. Going back as early as the 1700s, we can find over-the-top references to people “literally worn to a shadow”, “literally bubbling over with gratitude”, “literally coining money” and “literally rolling in wealth” (the last one being a description of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain).