Q: What's your opinion on people using "literally" in a way that means "figuratively"? Normally, I'm not a stickler about this kind of stuff... But now when people say "literally" ('Man, I've literally been listening to this album non-stop all week') I don't know if that's what they actually mean.
A: words change. that's what they do. you wouldn't believe what some of the words we use commonly today were 'originally' 'supposed' to mean. in fact, i think the word 'literally' has certainly been through many transformations before this one. so your undertanding of it to mean 'exactly' is surely just one stop along a multi-century train ride of language transformation