People who use the word “literally“ for something that can’t be literal is the reason I want man kind to be extinct.
nothings real dude not even grammer we made it up man go outside
“truth” words tend to become intensifiers over time.
-really comes from ‘real’+‘ly’ and at first had the literal sense ‘not unreal’, later acquiring its current one
-truly went through a similar process of first being literal then figurative then mostly an intensifier
-very is from the Anglo-French verrai ‘true, truthful’ and now we use it purely to mean ‘greatly’
This particular process of grammaticalization is very common in English, and probably other languages too.
‘literally’ has been undergoing this process since about the late 17th century. People complaining about the modern sense goes back to at least 1924. It’s reasonably likely that in a few decades it, like “truly”, will have only a vague sense of its etymological meaning, and perhaps that it will eventually lose it entirely, like “really” has.
katniss in book 3: my childrens playground is built on dead bodies and bones, i never wanted children but peeta convinced me, i will never heal from what happened to me. the end
Fandom in a Bottle 