Please don’t use “literally” as an intensive.
I mean, I know you can, but it just sounds stupid. It’s not like there aren’t a lot of other great intensives out there.
I was listening to the CBC today, and a lawyer said, in reference to the RCMP (federal police) “they were literally scraping the bottom of the barrel for new recruits.” Which, unless there is a giant barrel of new recruits and the poorest of the lot have been sloppily chugging maple syrup and are stuck to the bottom of that giant new recruit barrel, sounds dumb. Really. It does.
The “literally” does nothing for the sentence, either. As an intensive, it sucks. It’s distracting and usually unnecessary. Would anyone assume the RCMP was kinda sorta half-heartedly scraping the bottom of a metaphorical barrel? No. If you are scraping the bottom of the barrel, it is a pretty absolute condition. The phrase itself implies desperation to such an extent that an intensive adds nothing, and “literally” just makes you sound jumbled and rather foolish.
Knock it off.