Nobody ever uses, or even misuses, “literally” to mean “figuratively.” Substituting "figuratively into a sentence where “literally” is used will never give you the intended meaning. Saying “I figuratively went through the roof,” is quite different from saying “I literally went through the roof.” The first tones down the impact (“I went through the roof. . . sort of.”), the second intensifies it (“I went through the roof! Yes, I did!”).
When people say that “literally” is used to mean “figuratively” that just a humorous way of complaining about the allegedly incorrect usage of the word, but it is not an accurate characterization of what is going on.
The use of “literally” that people object to is when it used merely to mean something like “very much so,” and this does not necessarily have to go with a non-literal figure of speech. Suppose I walked ten miles, and (boasting or complaining) I tell someone “I literally walked ten miles!” This is literally true, but most likely what I intend is not something like “I walked exactly ten miles,” but rather “I walked ten miles. I really did!” In this case the, er, literal meaning of “literally” and the intensifying meaning do not conflict with one another, and, indeed, diverge only subtly (and I imagine it is from contexts like this that the intensifying meaning first arose). The problem arises when “literally” gets used in this intensifying way together with a non-literal figure of speech. Then the two meanings contradict one another, which makes some of us uncomfortable, and introduces a possibility for real misunderstanding.
A lot of these words seem to have revived spontaneously, but there are some that have been brought back deliberately as conscious archaisms. For example, engine in the sense of computing device, first there were Babbage’s “difference engine” and “analytical engine” in the 19th century, and then in the 1990s they dusted this off to coin the term “search engine.” For the longest time after search engines were introduced, the word always sounded self-consciously steampunkish. It must be no coincidence that it was coined shortly after the steampunk novel The Difference Engine was published.
‘Ask’ as a noun (meaning ‘request’) fell out of usage for about 500 years, then was revived in the 18th century and made its way into some specialized fields (Bridge, the stock market).
It’s making a bit of a comeback as a general term, and may already be common in Australia. I heard an (American) announcer at the Australian Open use it tonight, which reminded me of it. More from Language Log.
I’ve heard “big ask” (as in, “coming back from a 3-goal deficit is a big ask” or “following in Ronaldo’s footsteps is a big ask”) from English soccer announcers quite a bit. I often find myself resisting the temptation to use that term; it sounds a bit too much like “big ass” to just slip it into conversation casually. I wish it were common here, though.
The teenagers I teach use vexed frequently. It would never occur to me to correct them for it. The slang meaning they’re using has the same meaning as the one in dictionaries, so why would I correct them on it?
Some of their slang (like ‘bare’) is contrary to official definitions (that’s one of the reasons such slang arises, after all), but vex isn’t one of them. It was the very word I was thinking of when I saw this thread.
Dash is also used to mean to throw or pass something to someone, including violently, which is an old usage of the word; at least, a meaning I never came across often till recently.
Robin Hood and his band of men wore leggings in the 14th (?) century.
Romeo and Juilet wore leggings in the 16th century.
Maybe cowboys wore leggings (chaps) in the 19th century.
But nobody wore leggings after that… until about 1975, methinks.