adverb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
true
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It was almost literally true that she looked no older.
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Not at all, he assured me, the story he told was literally true .
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In fact this was literally true but the clause on the receipt went further.
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Yet, everything in his account was literally true .
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It does not imply that the story is completely untrue, but that it is not literally true .
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In addition, they asked whether the dreams reported in the New Testament could be literally true .
■ VERB
mean
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This means literally washing a wall with light.
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He meant literally what he said.
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Spenser, however, does not literally mean the sword.
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In fishing this literally means that the catching sector has been forced back into a more primitive, earlier phase.
run
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The kitchen walls literally run with water at times!
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By 1903 his law practice was going so badly, he literally ran out money.
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Female speaker I took his sweatshirt off and the blood was literally running down my arms.
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I had literally run away - from Englishness!
take
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This is not to be taken literally .
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Music takes us immediately into the realm of the symbolic, a world that is not to be taken literally .
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Speech seen but not heard may be taken literally .
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To them, the Bible is a scientific document to be taken literally .
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A little voice inside her whispered that Luke had never intended his generous words to be taken literally .
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But the rhetoric of such movements can not be taken literally .
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There is a very strong tendency to take literally what needs imaginative interpretation.
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They took literally those words in Romans 13 that forbade resistance to governments.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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Literally thousands of people lost their life savings in the market crash.
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Jan and I have literally nothing in common.
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The word "polygraph" literally means "many writings."
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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Disease is literally dis-ease, a state of disharmony and imbalance on one or other, or more, of these levels.
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It was, literally , going places.
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She sinks into a depressed condition in which she can literally but not cognitively see.
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Solarization is another technique that can be used during summer to literally cook the pests.
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Sunnyvale uses literally thousands of measures.
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The Boeing 247 a conventional plane which literally landed, was introduced in 1934.
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They reached the summit together hand in hand, quite literally .