Literally means in the exact word-for-word sense, with no exaggeration. Literally thousands, he literally ran, translated literally.
Its proper job is to say that a phrase which sounds like a figure of speech is true as stated: the room was literally freezing, meaning below zero. It is also very widely used as an intensifier of the opposite kind — I literally died — which is common in speech, disliked in careful writing, and has been happening since the eighteenth century. The safe advice: use it only when the literal sense is true, and use figuratively for the other.
1adverbliterallyIn the exact word-for-word sense.
“The name literally means new town.”
2adverbemphasisUsed for emphasis, without exact truth.
“There were literally a million things to sort out.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
literally is a way of taking words exactly.
Latin littera meant a letter of the alphabet. Literal, literature and letter are the same root, and literally means at the level of the letters — exactly as written, before any interpretation.
Old French
literal
Middle English
litteraly
English, today
literally
From Middle English litteraly, from und + literal, from Old French literal. From Middle English litteraly. See literal and letter. by surface analysis, literal + -ly.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA