You’re right, the word “literally” has become a sort of linguistic overkill, a safety blanket that people slap onto every exaggeration. In its proper sense, it means “in a literal or exact sense,” yet we use it to amplify, to make a metaphor feel more real. It’s like saying “I’m literally dying of embarrassment” when you’re just a little flushed. The result is a semantic muddle: people start to treat the word as a filler, not a precise descriptor. If we trimmed the excess, the sentence would read, “I’m so embarrassed I could faint,” which feels clearer and more honest. So next time you’re tempted to sprinkle a “literally,” check if you’re actually describing something that occurs in a literal, unembellished way, or if a simple adjective would do.