FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING--LITERALLY

A friend who is a grammarian sent an urgent message to me today: "THE END OF OUR WORLD IS NEAR: Google shows LITERALLY and FIGURATIVELY meaning the same!"

NO! NO! NO!

I don't care if my hero Mark Twain misused it when he wrote that Tom Sawyer was "literally rolling in wealth" or that Fitzgerald wrote that Jay Gatsby "literally glowed", I shall not give in!

Recently, at a meeting, someone said, "I literally died!" I grimaced and wrote on my notepad: "FIGURATIVELY, dammit!" A person sitting beside me, a retired teacher of English, wrote beside my note: "I gave up!

Also, see THE URBAN DICTIONARY example:

LITERALLY
People often confuse this word with figuratively.
-Dude, you figuratively died of embarassment, you illiterate dipshit.