The word literally originally meant “related to letters” as in this passage from 1689: “and in the Hebrew the words are literally, The King of Moab, the first.” Around the same time, the word began to be used interchangeably with “actually.” In 1698, Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards remarked, “then these things which ...

When did they change the meaning of literally?

The first borrowings of these words can be dated back to the early 1400s. In around 1450, the first example of the words literal and literally as we know them today (i.e. a word describing the primary sense of a concept) appeared. By 1670, another meaning for the word literally had surfaced.

When did people start using literally wrong?

The debate over the misuse of the word can be traced to the 18th or 19th century (depending on whom you ask), and the abuse began gathering legitimacy by 1839, when Charles Dickens wrote in “Nicholas Nickleby'' that a character “had literally feasted his eyes in silence on his culprit. ''