Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Illustration of man speaking Word meanings organically evolve over time as they are put to work by speakers. (jaouad.K/iStock via ...

Few words so rile language purists as the use of the adverb “literally” in a figurative sense, as in, “That movie literally blew my mind.” But as a linguist who studies how English has changed over ...