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Definitions: Literally |
LiterallyAdverb1. In a literal sense; "literally translated"; "he said so literally". 2. (intensifier before a figurative expression) without exaggeration; "our eyes were literally pinned to TV during the Gulf war". Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "literally" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1321. (references) |
Synonym: LiterallySynonym: virtually (adv). (additional references) |
| Antonym: figuratively (adv). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Imagination | Literally; after acceptation. |
Imitation | Adverb: literally, to the letter, verbatim, literatim, sic, totidem verbis, word for word, mot a mot; exactly, precisely. |
Interpretation | Literally, strictly speaking; in plain, in plainer terms, in plainer words, in plainer English; more simply. |
Truth | Exactly; Adjective: ad amussim; verbatim, verbatim et literatim; word for word, literally, literatim, totidem vervis, sic, to the letter, chapter and verse, ipsissimis verbis; ad unguem; to an inch; to a nicety, to a hair, to a tittle, to a turn, to a T; au pied de la lettre; neither more nor less; in every respect, in all respects; sous tous les rapports; at any rate, at all events; strictly speaking. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | You mean this literally, I take it? (Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles; writing credit: Anne Rice) Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products. (Life of Brian; writing credit: Graham Chapman; John Cleese) Dr. Evil, wouldn't it be easier to use your knowledge of the future to play the stock market? We could literally make trillions! (Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me; writing credit: Mike Myers) It literally makes or breaks the shirt. (Seinfeld; writing credit: Andreas Lenze; Bea Schmidt) We don't literally say it. (This Is Spinal Tap; writing credit: Christopher Guest; Michael McKean) | |
Tongue Twisters | Literally literary. (references; author: unknown) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | Portland Harbor, Maine Topographic survey Assistant Alexander Wadsworth Longfellow, 1854-1858 Literally thousands of individual houses were delineated on this survey Assistant Longfellow was the brother of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Topographic Survey T-735.Credit: Coast & Geodetic Survey Historical Image Collection. |  | South Pole Station on a day without a horizon, near "white out" conditions. Flags mark path. One would literally feel like walking in a bowl of milk. There was no surface definition and one had to walk with bent knees because impossible to determine if surface was uneven.Credit: Paths Less Taken - NOAA at the Ends of the Earth. |
 | Japanese fleeing in panic as the earth literally split underfoot during the series of earthquakes which shook Fukui and nearby towns on Honshu Island, June 28, 1948, taking the lives of more than 3,000 persons.Credit: Library of Congress. |  | Girls on wheels expedite aircraft production. Roller skates. Literally helping to speed the war effort, Dolores Richardson and Geneva Carpenter are ""expeditors" at Douglas Aircraft in El Segundo, California, where they deliver inter-departmental messages.Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Author | Quotation |
Lincoln Steffens | "So you've been over into Russia?" said Bernard Baruch, and I answered very literally, "I have been over into the future and it works." |
Sir Thomas Browne | We term sleep a death by which we may be literally said to die daily; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Title | Author | Quote |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | |
Walden | Thoreau, Henry David | To speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee overseers, came from Cambridge every day to get out the ice. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | The drugs literally change their brains. (references) | |
Our largest and most highly visible organ, the skin, literally holds us together. (references) | ||
ACEPHALY literally means absence of the head. It is a much rarer condition than anencephaly. (references) | ||
Business | In main cities, waste is irregularly collected and collection is literally absent in suburbs. (references) | |
Throughout the discussion, literally hundreds of statistics on China are benchmarked against regional and global averages. (references) | ||
The project must be literally self-financing, without reliance on guarantees or other undertakings from owners or third parties. (references) | ||
Civil Liberties | Venezuela | One newspaper editorialized that this threat was "extremely dangerous: his threat to display [the] photograph constitutes literally an incitement to a physical lynching." President Chavez also publicly accused media owners and institutions of tax evasion, sometimes citing individual persons or media. (references) |
Economic History | Romania | Furthermore, regulations change frequently, sometimes literally overnight, and without advance notice. (references) |
Egypt | In the extreme, some of these people literally operate out of their homes and have neither office nor staff, but they can be effective. (references) | |
Minorities | Mauritania | The majority of those known as Black Moors are Haratine, literally meaning "one who has been freed," although some Black Moor families never were enslaved. (references) |
Political Economy | BRAZIL | The only significant limitation on freedom of association is "unicidade" (literally "one per city"), which restricts representation for any professional category to one union in a given geographical area. (references) |
Trade | Taiwan | Such additional approval and documentation requirements add to the administrative burdens of importing products into Taiwan or make importation literally impossible for small exporters. (references) |
Travel | Netherlands | The term "unfurnished" must be taken literally. (references) |
Lexicography | Devil's Dictionary | MEERSCHAUM, n. (Literally, seafoam, and by many erroneously supposed to be made of it.) A fine white clay, which for convenience in coloring it brown is made into tobacco pipes and smoked by the workmen engaged in that industry. The purpose of coloring it has not been disclosed by the manufacturers. There was a youth (you've heard before, This woeful tale, may be), Who bought a meerschaum pipe and swore That color it would he! He shut himself from the world away, Nor any soul he saw. He smoke by night, he smoked by day, As hard as he could draw. His dog died moaning in the wrath Of winds that blew aloof; The weeds were in the gravel path, The owl was on the roof. "He's gone afar, he'll come no more," The neighbors sadly say. And so they batter in the door To take his goods away. Dead, pipe in mouth, the youngster lay, Nut-brown in face and limb. "That pipe's a lovely white," they say, "But it has colored him!" The moral there's small need to sing -- 'Tis plain as day to you: Don't play your game on any thing That is a gamester too. Martin Bulstrode |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| Speaker | Phrase(s) |
Dennis Miller | The biggest problem facing citizens of the Third World is one quite literally of their own making, and that is over-population. |
John Kerry | Some of them to my best friends, literally my best friend at college, a couple of my best friends in Vietnam, and high school friends. They're there. And I go down and visit. I think we all do. |
Marla Hanson | I became so depressed that I sold everything that I owned. I moved into the Chelsea Hotel, where I literally just wanted to die. I mean, I didn't want to live. I don't know if I wanted to kill myself as much as I didn't want to live. |
Paul Burrell | In the court room. He beckoned me to come out of the dark, which is the place you sit surrounded by glass. And I stepped out of the dark and went to him. He said, the queen's stopped the trial. I literally embraced him and cried. |
Rush Limbaugh | Rich or poor, free or enslaved, north or south, oil is literally the fuel of the engine of human activity. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Speaker | Term | Phrase(s) |
Gerald Ford | 1974-1977 | We are wasting literally millions of working hours costing billions of taxpayers' and consumers' dollars because of bureaucratic red tape. |
Jimmy Carter | 1977-1981 | In our modern world, when the deaths of literally millions of people can result from a few terrifying seconds of destruction, the path of national strength and security is identical to the path of peace. |
Ronald Reagan | 1981-1989 | The last decade saw domestic spending surge literally out of control. |
Bill Clinton | 1993-2001 | There are some people who literally do not understand the impact of this problem on people's lives. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| "Literally" is generally used as an adverb (general) -- approximately 99.80% of the time. "Literally" is used about 1,991 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Adverb (general) | 99.8% | 1,987 | 4,325 |
| Noun (proper) | 0.2% | 4 | 175,879 |
| Total | 100.00% | 1,991 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| Hypenated Usage | |
Ending with "literally": non-literally, semi-literally. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
literally | 22 |
god literally | 4 |
been century concept debated gained has it it it knowledge literally means | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "literally"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | vërtet (actually, fairly, genuinely, indeed, properly, really, truly, verily, yeah, ywis), në kuptimin e plotë të fjalës, germë për germë (word for word), fjalë për fjalë (word for word). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Basque | gutxitan (to literally less). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | буквално (literatim, to the letter). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | 逐字地, 按照字面 . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | letterlýk (literal, to the letter), naar de letter (to the letter, verbatim, word-for-word). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | sanasta sanaan (verbatim, word for word), sananmukaisesti (word for word). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | littéralement (literatim). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | buchstäblich (literal, litterally, to the letter). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | κυριολεκτικά (just), κατά γράμμα (literal, literatim). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hebrew | מלה במלה (verbatim), פשוטו כמשמעו (mere), אות באות. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | szó szerint (to the letter, verbatim, word for word, word-for-word), szó szoros értelmében (in a proper sense, in the full sense of the word, in the literal sense, in the proper sense of the word, in the strictest sense of the word, technically speaking). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | letteralmente (literal). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | 文字通り . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | もじどおり. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Korean | 문자적으로. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | iterallylay interpretação literal. (various references) literalmente, pur şi simplu (downright, just, merely, simply), fãrã exagerare, cuvânt cu cuvânt (literal, verbal, verbally, word for word), ad litteram. (various references) буквально (literatim, textually, to the letter). (various references) 'sam (at all; literally, in which : 'sam bith, in whom). (various references) prozaično (prosaically), doslovce (letter: to the letter, literatim), bukvalno (literatim). (various references) literalmente (literatim, verbatim). (various references) formligen (positively, simply), bokstavligen (literatim, positively). (various references) อย่างแท้จริง (easily, indeed, simply, sincerely), อย่างตามตัวอักษร. (various references) harfi harfine (factual, fair, fairly, literatim, strict, to the letter, verbal, verbatim, word by word, word for word). (various references) буквально (literatim, simply, verbally), без перебільшення, дослівно (verbatim, word for word). (various references) theo từng chữ thật vậy, theo nghĩa đen, đúng là (another). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Misspellings | |
"Literally" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: laterlly, literall, literaly, literarlly, literarly, litterally, litteraly, litterfall, lterally, Luterells, Lutterell. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "literally" (pronounced li"terulē or li"trulē) |
| 5 | -t er u l ē | bilaterally, contradictorily, multilaterally, unilaterally. |
| 4 | -er u l ē | agriculturally, architecturally, culturally, federally, generally, liberally, naturally, peripherally, procedurally, structurally, temporally, unnaturally, viscerally. |
| 3 | -u l ē | abnormally, abysmally, accidentally, actually, additionally, anecdotally, anencephaly, angrily, annually, anomaly, arbitrarily, artfully, artificially, beneficially, blissfully, bodily, botanically, broccoli, brutally, busily, carefully, casually, centrally, cerebrally, cheerfully, chronically, Cicely, circumstantially, civilly, clinically, clumsily, coincidentally, comically, commercially, conceptually, conditionally, confidentially, congressionally, conspiratorially, constitutionally, continentally, continually, contractually, conventionally, cordially, crazily, criminally, critically, customarily, cynically, delightfully, developmentally, diagonally, diametrically, digitally, dismally, diurnally, dorsally, dreadfully, dutifully, easily, editorially, educationally, eerily, electrically, electronically, emotionally, empirically, environmentally, equally, essentially, eternally, ethically, eventually, exceptionally, experimentally, exponentially, externally, extraordinarily, facsimile, factually, faithfully, family, fanatically, fatally, finally, financially, fiscally, fitfully, florally, forcefully, formally, fractionally, frantically, frightfully, frugally, functionally, fundamentally, gainfully, generationally, geographically, giggly, gleefully, globally, gloomily, governmentally, gracefully, gradually, gratefully, gravelly, gravitationally, greedily, habitually, handily, happily, hastily, haughtily, heartily, heavily, helpfully, hermetically, historically, homily, hopefully, horizontally, hungrily, icily, illegally, impartially, incidentally, incrementally, individually, industrially, informally, initially, institutionally, intellectually, intentionally, internally, internationally, intrinsically, involuntarily, irrationally, jauntily, journalistically, joyfully, judicially, lawfully, lazily, legally, locally, loyally, luckily, magically, magnetically, majestically, manfully, manually, marginally, masterfully, materially, mathematically, meaningfully, medicinally, mentally, mercifully, merrily, methodically, metrically, mightily, militarily, mineralogically, minimally, momentarily, monetarily, monopoly, monumentally, morally, mortally, multifamily, municipally, mutually, nasally, nationally, nattily, necessarily, noisily, nominally, normally, novelly, nutritionally, occasionally, officially, oligopoly, operationally, optimistically, orally, orchestrally, ordinarily, originally, painfully, parenthetically, partially, pathetically, peacefully, perennially, periodically, perpetually, personally, phenomenally, philosophically, physically, pitifully, playfully, politically, potentially, pragmatically, preferentially, preliminarily, presidentially, primarily, professionally, proportionally, provincially, provisionally, purposefully, quintessentially, racially, radially, rationally, readily, regally, regionally, regretfully, respectfully, rightfully, ritualistically, romantically, royally, ruefully, sardonically, satisfactorily, scantily, scientifically, seasonally, secondarily, semiannually, sequentially, serenely, severally, sexually, skeptically, skillfully, sleepily, sloppily, socially, specially, speedily, spiritually, statistically, statutorily, steadily, steamily, subfamily, subliminally, substantially, subtly, successfully, summarily, supremely, surgically, symbolically, sympathetically, tactfully, tactically, tangentially, tastefully, tearfully, technically, technologically, temperamentally, temporarily, terminally, territorially, testily, thankfully, theatrically, theoretically, therapeutically, thoughtfully, totally, traditionally, Tripoli, truthfully, uncannily, unconditionally, unconstitutionally, uncritically, uneasily, unequivocally, unhappily, unintentionally, universally, unlawfully, unnecessarily, unofficially, unsuccessfully, unusually, usefully, usually, virtually, visually, vitally, vocally, voluntarily, warily, wearily, wiggly, wilfully, willfully, wishfully, wistfully, wittily, wobbly, woefully, wonderfully, wrongfully. |
| 5 | -t r u l ē | centrally, orchestrally, satisfactorily. |
| 4 | -r u l ē | angrily, arbitrarily, cerebrally, customarily, eerily, extraordinarily, florally, hungrily, merrily, militarily, momentarily, morally, necessarily, orally, ordinarily, preliminarily, primarily, secondarily, severally, statutorily, summarily, temporarily, unnecessarily, voluntarily, warily, wearily. |
| 3 | -u l ē | abnormally, abysmally, accidentally, actually, additionally, agriculturally, anecdotally, anencephaly, annually, anomaly, architecturally, artfully, artificially, beneficially, bilaterally, blissfully, bodily, botanically, broccoli, brutally, busily, carefully, casually, cheerfully, chronically, Cicely, circumstantially, civilly, clinically, clumsily, coincidentally, comically, commercially, conceptually, conditionally, confidentially, congressionally, conspiratorially, constitutionally, continentally, continually, contractually, contradictorily, conventionally, cordially, crazily, criminally, critically, culturally, cynically, delightfully, developmentally, diagonally, diametrically, digitally, dismally, diurnally, dorsally, dreadfully, dutifully, easily, editorially, educationally, electrically, electronically, emotionally, empirically, environmentally, equally, essentially, eternally, ethically, eventually, exceptionally, experimentally, exponentially, externally, facsimile, factually, faithfully, family, fanatically, fatally, federally, finally, financially, fiscally, fitfully, forcefully, formally, fractionally, frantically, frightfully, frugally, functionally, fundamentally, gainfully, generally, generationally, geographically, giggly, gleefully, globally, gloomily, governmentally, gracefully, gradually, gratefully, gravelly, gravitationally, greedily, habitually, handily, happily, hastily, haughtily, heartily, heavily, helpfully, hermetically, historically, homily, hopefully, horizontally, icily, illegally, impartially, incidentally, incrementally, individually, industrially, informally, initially, institutionally, intellectually, intentionally, internally, internationally, intrinsically, involuntarily, irrationally, jauntily, journalistically, joyfully, judicially, lawfully, lazily, legally, liberally, locally, loyally, luckily, magically, magnetically, majestically, manfully, manually, marginally, masterfully, materially, mathematically, meaningfully, medicinally, mentally, mercifully, methodically, metrically, mightily, mineralogically, minimally, monetarily, monopoly, monumentally, mortally, multifamily, multilaterally, municipally, mutually, nasally, nationally, nattily, naturally, noisily, nominally, normally, novelly, nutritionally, occasionally, officially, oligopoly, operationally, optimistically, originally, painfully, parenthetically, partially, pathetically, peacefully, perennially, periodically, peripherally, perpetually, personally, phenomenally, philosophically, physically, pitifully, playfully, politically, potentially, pragmatically, preferentially, presidentially, procedurally, professionally, proportionally, provincially, provisionally, purposefully, quintessentially, racially, radially, rationally, readily, regally, regionally, regretfully, respectfully, rightfully, ritualistically, romantically, royally, ruefully, sardonically, scantily, scientifically, seasonally, semiannually, sequentially, serenely, sexually, skeptically, skillfully, sleepily, sloppily, socially, specially, speedily, spiritually, statistically, steadily, steamily, structurally, subfamily, subliminally, substantially, subtly, successfully, supremely, surgically, symbolically, sympathetically, tactfully, tactically, tangentially, tastefully, tearfully, technically, technologically, temperamentally, temporally, terminally, territorially, testily, thankfully, theatrically, theoretically, therapeutically, thoughtfully, totally, traditionally, Tripoli, truthfully, uncannily, unconditionally, unconstitutionally, uncritically, uneasily, unequivocally, unhappily, unilaterally, unintentionally, universally, unlawfully, unnaturally, unofficially, unsuccessfully, unusually, usefully, usually, virtually, viscerally, visually, vitally, vocally, wiggly, wilfully, willfully, wishfully, wistfully, wittily, wobbly, woefully, wonderfully, wrongfully. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-e-i-l-l-l-r-t-y" | |
-2 letters: alertly, irately, literal, reality, tallier, tearily. | |
-3 letters: aerily, artily, elytra, lately, leally, lealty, lyrate, rallye, really, realty, retail, retial, rillet, tailer, taille, taller, telial, tiller. | |
-4 letters: alert, alley, allyl, alter, ariel, artel, early, ileal, iller, irate, laity, later, layer, leary, liter, litre, lyart, rally, ratel, relay, relit, retia, riley, rille, riyal, taler, tally. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-e-i-l-l-l-r-t-y" | |
+2 letters: bilaterally, cellularity, trisyllable. | |
+3 letters: electrically, illiberality, illiterately, relationally, trisyllables, unilaterally. | |
+4 letters: collaterality, ipsilaterally, lethargically, matrilineally, proleptically, realistically, recallability. | |
+5 letters: alliteratively, allosterically, bolometrically, crystallizable, electronically, illustratively, multilaterally, petrologically, telemetrically, volumetrically. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)4C 69 74 65 72 61 6C 6C 79 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references).-.. .. - . .-. .- .-.. .-.. -.--. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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| Amazon.com BOOKS: Search for: "literally" |
