Word Finder - literally

definition

Word for word; not figuratively; not as an idiom or metaphor

example

When I saw on the news that there would be no school tomorrow because of the snowstorm, I literally jumped for joy, and hit my head on the ceiling fan.

synonyms

• actually
• really

definition

(degree, contranym) Used non-literally as an intensifier for figurative statements: virtually, so to speak (often considered incorrect; see usage notes)

example

He was so surprised, he literally jumped twenty feet in the air.

synonyms

• virtually

definition

Used to intensify or dramatise non-figurative statements; tending towards a meaningless filler word in repeated use.

example

I had no idea, so I was literally guessing.

definition

Used as a generic downtoner: just, merely.

example

You literally put it in the microwave for five minutes and it's done.

synonyms

• merely

By blow up, do you mean literally or figuratively?

She'd never thought he meant she'd literally help revive the planet.

She was literally at the end of her rope, so flight into the woods was unwise.

A mouse she could handle – literally, but a snake was something different.

Would you believe it, I have literally not a penny and don't know how to equip Boris.

They slept together — literally, and he never offered to do anything else.

Grasso lifted Molly by her waist band with one hand and literally tossed her into the van before slamming it shut.

The Latin comes meant literally a companion or follower.

The mot was literally true.

With the iPhone, you can literally store thousands of pictures.

Once before he had felt that way about a woman and she had literally left him waiting at the altar while she ran off with another man.

If literally doing nothing at all is impossible, do something creative with the hands.

A great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials.

The yoga philosophy maintains that the breath is the most important facet of health, as the breath is the largest source of "prana," or life force, and hatha yoga uses "pranayama," which literally means the science or control of breathing.

Nightmares are part of the normal developmental process that literally provide a "wake-up" call to both parent and child to pay attention to strong feelings and problems that may require some resolution.

One such congenital brain anomaly, anencephaly (literally "without brain") results when the topmost portion of the tube fails to close and the brain does not develop.

Excessive brain size is termed megalencephaly (literally "big brain").

No one has ever literally died of embarrassment, but people have been killed or injured because they didn't want to appear to be too careful in front of others.

Patients literally "fear the fear," and worry incessantly about when and where the next attack may occur.

The begging fakirs also go about with a lighted stick of incense in one hand, and holding out with the other an incense-holder (literally, "incense chariot"), into which the coins of the pious are thrown.

A peculiar feature of the arable tract is the Pats (literally cups) or depressed lands near the river-banks.

The slithery reptile has been rubbing shoulders, quite literally, with legendary snake-charming hell-raiser, Alice Cooper.

And like a great many other phrases of modern intellectualism, it means literally nothing at all.

Literally towering above all others is the village of San Gimignano, which sits serenely on a hill overlooking the Elsa Valley.

Failure of division is termed holoprosencephaly (literally "whole forebrain").

This causes an abnormal cleft or groove to appear on the surface of the brain, called schizencephaly (literally "split brain").

It can literally be any kind of content you want on your site.

The forests literally swarm with insects of all kinds, from cicadae to beautiful butterflies, and from stickand leaf-insects to endless.

To these, but with special reference to the work of Chandler, which maintained that a number of prophecies were literally fulfilled in Christ, Collins replied by his Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered (1727).

Among Conjugatae reproduction is effected solely by means of conjugation of what are literally aplanospores.

Some of the correspondences in the two stories are most minute, and even the phraseology, in which some of the details of Josaphat's history are described, almost literally renders the Sanskrit of the Lalita Vistara.

The inference is not expressly drawn, though it becomes perfectly clear from his refutation of William Whiston's curious counter theory that there were in the original Hebrew scriptures prophecies which were literally fulfilled in the New Testament, but had been expunged at an early date by Jewish scribes.

The world, which perhaps ought to have been vexed, chose rather to be diverted; and the great satirist literally strains his power ut pueris placeat.

It in circa cluded the Carpathian region of Bukovina, literally the beechwood, " where lay Sereth and Suciava (Suczawa), the earliest residences of the voivodes, the maritime district of Budzak (the later Bessarabia), with Kilia, Byelgorod and the left bank of the lower Danube from Galatz to the Sulina mouth.

These are heavy and follow the original too literally.

In the 'seventies, after a succession of wet seasons, and again in the 'eighties, settlement was pushed far westward, beyond the limits of safe agriculture, but hundreds of settlers - and indeed many entire communities - were literally starved out by the recurrence of droughts.

It has been suggested that the ideogram by which it is indicated in Babylonian monuments literally means "fortress of the Amorites"; could this be proved it would be valuable testimony to its antiquity if not its origin.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of places around Britain where farmland directly adjoins such establishments.

This is a people who are being both literally and spiritually adulterous.

The problem is that inevitably a clinical description becomes anecdotal, since every case is, literally, unique in its extent and distribution.

The term anorexia literally means loss of appetite, but this isn't a true symptom of the disorder.

It literally means a desert and by extension it is applied to what we would call a hermitage.

Literally it means to have your insides taken out, therefore feeling empty inside.

Central Asia is peppered with nasty outfits, like Nepal's Maoist insurgency, which literally bleed across borders.

I was literally looking into people's minds, which is an incredibly intimate place to be.

If the relative is the object of a preposition, the latter is put at the end of the clause, and has a personal ending, thus y ty y b12m ynddo, literally, " the house which I-was in-it."

It was a run-down pub with things literally falling apart and as bad a reputation as you can get.

Here, you'll begin your lessons on French I and can continue all the way to French VII, and because this site covers subjects like Computers and the Internet and Camping, you'll literally feel like you're back in school.

In addition to the holiday itself, a widespread French tradition on many holidays is to faire le pont, which literally means 'make the bridge'.

It literally revolves around and around, using aphorisms about war and cons as axes upon which the movie almost physically rotates.