Lexical Investigtion - Literally

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Let’s trace the history of this meandering adverb. 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 he affirmed of himself were not literally true, but only figuratively.” By 1839, when Charles Dickens wrote Nicholas Nickleby, the figurative sense (the sense that the reading public is up in arms about today) was embedded in the language: “his looks were very haggard, and his limbs and body literally worn to the bone…”