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People Hate the Word ‘Literally’

I think it’s fine

Evan Purcell
Thought Thinkers
Published in
3 min readJan 31, 2025

A young boy watches his father literally explode.
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Lots of English speakers use the word “literally” wrong. We all know this.

Literally” means “in a literal sense.” It’s used to emphasize the truth or accuracy of a statement. And yet, we have people say things like this:

“Dad was so mad, he literally exploded!”

No he didn’t. Spontaneous combustion isn’t real. The speaker is using “literally” for emphasis.

Some people hate sentences like these and feel obliged to correct the speaker. I’m not one of those people. Sentences are meant to convey meaning, and I understand that sentence perfectly.

Now, imagine if the same speaker had said, “Dad was so mad, he totally exploded!”

That’s also incorrect. The word “totally” doesn’t fit there either, but for some reason, fewer people get upset by that word’s misuse. Why is that?

We have so many adverbs and adverbial phrases that could fit in this sentence:

  • Absolutely
  • Completely
  • Basically
  • Definitely
  • Pretty much
  • More or less
  • Full-on (my personal favorite)

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Thought Thinkers

Published in Thought Thinkers

A community for readers, writers, poets, satirists, creatives, and thinkers of thoughts

Evan Purcell

Written by Evan Purcell

Evan Purcell is a writer and English teacher who has worked all over the world (most recently in Kazakhstan). He's working on his first feature film.

Responses (28)

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It’s literally not a big deal.

Yep, it's not a big deal, but it's a newish deal. The ironic usage didn't exist (well, was very rare) when I was a kid or young adult. So now, when it's used as a contranym, it often illicits a response that linguists call a:

Those-damn-kids-and-their-damn-funny-talk-ism

Literally!

😉...

80

Some people hate sentences like these and feel obliged to correct the speaker. I’m not one of those people. Sentences are meant to convey meaning, and I understand that sentence perfect...

🥺🥺

59

I literally got your point and I am in absolute favour of using word " literally" like literally however you want.

96