I envision Shakespeare doing triple Salchows in his grave hearing too many people literally use the word “literally” these days: “He literally just said that” or “That’s literally the point” or even better “you literally used the word literally wrong.”
Mark Twain said “if you see an adverb, shoot it” (he’s doing quadruple Salchows to one-up Billy) and while I cannot espouse murder for any reason (unless one is literally defending oneself), I can agree with the premise because “literally” is literally used way too much. It’s the equivalent of verbal waterboarding by way of fingernail chalkboarding.
As an alternative to the L word, I thesaurusly consulted words like “factually” and “accurately” and “exactly” and “plainly,” descending syllabically which had me thinking: is “literally” literally four syllables or three?
Anyway, what’s a sufficiently sufficient substitute? I thought of words like “precisely” and “actually” and even “undeviatingly,” but those just don’t punch the air supercalifragilisticexpialidociously. “Truly” is too soft and “simply” is maybe even overly soft.
And then it hit me: verbatim. The word literally means “exactly as written” or “word for word.” And since Latin is a dying language, what better way to shout CLEAR! and paddle-chest this word nomenclaturely? Though now as I think about it, I foresee someone wanting to add emphasis and thus saying “verbatimly.”
