Since it’s widely accepted that the word “literally” can be used to add emphasis, we need another word that can be used when you want to make it clear that you really mean “literally” in the original sense.

  • Ontimp@feddit.org
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    13 hours ago

    In German we have multiple different words that mean “literally”, not all of which can be used for emphasis. There are the phrases “im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes” (“in the truest sense of the word”) as well as “etwas wörtlich nehmen” (“to take something literally”), both of which are usually not used for emphasis, presumably also because they don’t nearly fit into the grammatical construction of a sentence in a way that would produce emphasis. Then there is “buchstäblich” (roughly “letterish”), which means the same thing as literally and can be used in both ways, as it’s an adverb. But then there is “wortwörtlich” (roughly “word-wordly”), which is also an adverb and grammatically fits into the same position, but I’ve never heard it being used for emphasis.

    Language is weird.