Subscribe: Weekly Football Phrase
Each week the languagecaster team will explain a football phrase or cliche for learners of English who love the sport. On this week’s show we feature the word ‘literally’. Click on the link below to learn about the word or phrase, while you can also read the transcript. You can also find many more examples by going to our football phrase page here football cliches here and our huge football glossary here.
Listen here: Literally.mp3
This week’s football phrase is ‘literally‘ which is an adverb and means in a literal sense, exactly or actually. Of course, it is not just a football word but it is one that is often used by players and pundits within the game. However, more often than not, the word is wrongly used which can annoy many people. Players often say ‘literally’ to add emphasis to their comments, for instance, the ball literally flew into the net’. Indeed, in a recent article for The Sun newspaper here in the UK, linguistics expert Tony Thorne explained that the phrase ‘…has lost its true a€” literal a€” meaning and is being used instead of ‘really’, ‘truly’ or ’emphatically”. The word literally is therefore beginning to lose its literal sense! ‘literally’.
