Literally Speaking UPDATED

I know I irk people with stuff like this (I have been driving MHW crazy for 23 + years and my kids roll their eyes when I bring up the topic) but PEOPLE, PLEASE!!!!

'Literally' does not mean 'figuratively' so stop using it that way!

Case in point: In an otherwise fine article printed in the YU Commentator (via Back Row of the Bais) Yehudah Mirsky writes:.

This essay is dedicated to all the people, remembered and forgotten, who literally gave their lives for the idea that Yeshiva, however imperfectly, represents (emphasis added).

I could be wrong but I don't think the author means that anyone literally gave his life for YU. I think he means the people who figuratively gave their lives. Had the author written "Dedicated to those who gave their lives for the idea...", Dayeinu.

Later in the article, the author reverts to the term 'literally' in a very sketchy manner. He writes:

My grandfather passed away in 1967, finishing his decades-long work on the Sheiltot literally on his deathbed.

The phrase "on his deathbed" is itself a figure of speech, generally not to be taken literally. Thus, if his grandfather actually finished his work in the very bed in which he died one could argue, b'dieved, that it is appropriate to use the phrase "literally on his deathbed." If, as is more likely the case, the author meant that his grandfather finished his work just before he died, he would have made the exact same point by simply writing, "My grandfather passed away in 1967, finishing his decades-long work on the Sheilot on his deathbed".

And, Amshinover, while I'm at it, 'separate' has two 'a's and two 'e's, not three 'e's.

UPDATE: It must be Adar because while spelling my name incorrectly, Josh points out a "venehapech hu". He cites to an on-line dictionary that suggests that a permissible usage of 'literally' is as an 'intensive' (like 'mamash', e.g.) so that, contrary to my rant, the author was within his rights to use literally to mean figuratively. Another sign that we are in the era of Ikvasa d'meshicha.