Few words so rile language purists as the use of the adverb “literally” in a figurative sense, as in, “That movie literally blew my mind.”
But as a linguist who studies how English has changed over the centuries, I can promise that, while it might feel like nails screeching on a blackboard, the use of nonliteral “literally” developed as an organic and dynamic outgrowth of the very human desire to communicate emotion and intensity.
