All 16 Uses of

literally

in

The Turn of the Screw

I scarce know how to put my story into words that shall be a credible picture of my state of mind; but I was in these days literally able to find a joy in the extraordinary flight of heroism the occasion demanded of me.
Chpt All

literally = an intensifier (to intensify what is said)

I had supposed I had brushed away the ugly signs: but I could literally—for the time, at all events—rejoice, under this fathomless charity, that they had not entirely disappeared.
Chpt All

What was it you had in mind when, in our distress, before Miles came back, over the letter from his school, you said, under my insistence, that you didn't pretend for him that he had not literally EVER been 'bad'?
Chpt All

literally = actually (not figuratively; not an exaggeration)

He has NOT literally 'ever,' in these weeks that I myself have lived with him and so closely watched him; he has been an imperturbable little prodigy of delightful, lovable goodness.
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The homage of which they were so lavish succeeded, in truth, for my nerves, quite as well as if I never appeared to myself, as I may say, literally to catch them at a purpose in it.
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There were times of our being together when I would have been ready to swear that, literally, in my presence, but with my direct sense of it closed, they had visitors who were known and were welcome.
Chpt All

literally = actually (not figuratively; not an exaggeration)

I seemed literally to be running a race with some confusion to which he was about to reduce me, but I felt that he had got in first when, before we had even entered the churchyard, he threw out— "I want my own sort!"
Chpt All *

literally = an intensifier (to intensify what is said)

It literally made me bound forward.
Chpt All *

literally = actually (not figuratively; not an exaggeration)

It was literally a charming exhibition of tact, of magnanimity, and quite tantamount to his saying outright: "The true knights we love to read about never push an advantage too far."
Chpt All

literally = an intensifier (to intensify what is said)

"The story WON'T tell," said Douglas; "not in any literal, vulgar way."†
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I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally well in hand in advance of my sounding that note; so that even now, as she bravely blinked under the signal of my word, I could keep her comparatively firm.†
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For at the end of a time that under his influence I had quite ceased to measure, I started up with a strange sense of having literally slept at my post.†
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I've said it already—she was literally, she was hideously, hard; she had turned common and almost ugly.†
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No evening I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite of which—and in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had opened beneath my feet—there was literally, in the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness.†
Chpt All

It was as if, when we were face to face in the dining room, he had literally shown me the way.†
Chpt All

Definitions:

(1) (literally as in: literally--not figuratively)
actually true using the basic meaning of the words (not an exaggeration, metaphor, or other type of figurative speech)
(2) (literally as in: literally at death's door)
an intensifier (to intensify what is said -- especially a metaphor)

Since literally can mean actually true, but can also be used to intensify a metaphor, the reader has to use context to know what the word means.

For example, if you read "She stabbed him in the back," you would probably assume she betrayed him. But if you read it in a murder mystery where the victim was stabbed, you might assume you were being told that she actually stabbed him.

Because confusion can arise from this kind of usage, many authorities discourage using literally to intensify a metaphor--especially in formal usage.
(3) (literal as in: a literal translation)
word for word
(4) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)
Less common and more specific meanings of literal include:
- an earlier or original meaning of a word -- as in "In Japanese the literal meaning of ronin was a 'samurai without a master,' but it is now used to describe a student who did not pass the entrance exam and is without a school."
- lacking imagination -- as in "She has a literal mind."
- a fixed or hard-coded value in a computer program -- as in "Find every instance of the literal in the source code."
- related to letters -- as in "In algebra we use literal notation as when 'x' represents a value."