From something I saw on Amazon.co.uk: "Powerball is a dynamic and completely revolutionary new gyroscope that literally explodes with mind-numbing torque and inertia once you activate its internal rotor." This thing is a hand-held toy/exercise thingie... that *literally* explodes? Right, competition time: Everyone find an example of the worst misuse of "literally" for our collective amusement, and the best one wins.
In football this season, one TV pundit said the following after one player had taken the ball past another player before scoring: "He's literally left him for dead there."
Meh, she probably just spilled some beer on them, assuming the word pants was used in the american way...
Nah I literally did have a loss of bladder control** **On the proviso that the use of the word literally is used in the context of meaning figuratively or metaphorically. So my statement actually meant the following: After reading that post I was moved to utter an amused grunt and consider the most inappropriate use of the word literally that is used very commonly. Upon reflection I considered that people wet their pants all the time but on this occasion I hadn't actually wet my pants laughing but it would be funny and cause others to wet their pants laughing if they thought I had wet my pants laughing... So i didn't literally wet my pants laughing but others did wet their pants laughing at the idea of me wetting my pants laughing. So metaphorically pants were wet by laughing. Just because those pants weren't mine adds to the existential uncertainty of the use of the word literally.*** ***Commonsense only gets you so far and then logic takes over to take you to a place where the lights are dim, the music loud and there's all these people who seem to have bug eyes and a penchant for the colour black and your wondering why you aren't in bed.
