[sokoloff]

I could happily live with an English that didn’t accept literally to mean “not literally”.

Informal: used for emphasis or to express strong feeling while not being literally true. "I was literally blown away by the response I got."

[kazinator]

But that English may have never existed! "Literally" has a long history of being used to mean "a kind of figuratively that is almost perceived like it's really happening" or something like that; perhaps as long as the word itself.

What I could live without is the dialect of English in which "literally" is used to explain away some figure of speech as not being a figure of speech, whereby, oops, there is actually no figure of speech to explain away.

Like "I literally just moved to this town yesterday, so I don't know my way around yet".

What is that for? Nobody suspects that you figuratively moved into this town yesterday; if you moved here just yesterday, then "I moved to this town just yesterday" is perfectly adequate.

(Now being born yesterday is a genuine figure of speech; we could make a meme in which a speech balloon next to a newborn infant's mouth makes a joke about literally having been born yesterday: that would be a valid use of literally.)

Since being blown away is a genuine figure of speech, the expression of "literally blown away" which refers to a situation which is still only figurative is a well-entrenched use of the word: hundreds of years old, I think. It says that the figure of speech is so fitting that if you imagine me being literally blown away, that is actually fairly accurate, so much so that when the inevitable film adaptation is made of my life story, special effects will necessarily hav to be used to portray it that way.

[rich_sasha]

It’s just become a word of exclamation, hyperbolic at that, no? If someone literally moved to a town yesterday, they probably mean neither literally nor figuratively, but rather, just highlighting their short tenure at the new place.

I’m a bit of a language pedant, but find it difficult to argue with the society assigning new meanings to words as the language evolves. Modern English is a tragically malformed and bastardised version of Saxon mixed with French, after all.

[Gene_Parmesan]

You'd have to go quite a ways back for that one.

Charles Dickens, "Nicholas Nickleby" -- "[h]is looks were haggard, and his limbs and body literally worn to the bone"

[kazinator]

We can look at it like this: kidding and hyperbole aren't bad grammar. Limbs could literally be worn to the bone; that they are actually not isn't a matter of grammar.

The character is fictitious in the first place, so we could argue that "his looks were haggard" is misusing the word were, since were may only refer to a person that existed. :)