I absolutely can't stand the way that no one apparently knows what "literally" means. It's misused in a variety of forums but the most frequent offenders tend to be sports writers and/or broadcasters. A few weeks ago during a Chicago Bulls broadcast, Johnny "Red" Kerr announced that one of the players was "literally hacked to death" during a drive to the basket. Yet no one was thrown out of the game much less arrested. Then in a review of the pros and cons of top wide receiver prospect, Calvin Johnson, of Georgia Tech, John Murphy of Yahoo! Sports reported that Johnson "literally exploded out of the gates" during his 40 yard dash at the NFL combines. Wow. That was really not widely reported. One would think that if the best athlete in the draft "literally exploded" it would have been given a couple of seconds on SportsCenter.
I know they mean "metaphorically" (even if they don't know it). I guess it's kind of funny to think of how the "literal" version of their metaphors would play out in real life but geez you'd think that a professional communicator would figure it out at some point.
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