🆚What is the difference between "actually" and "literally" ? "actually" vs "literally" ? (2025)

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Answer: 19

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actually meas `due the facts, despite something`
- he is an engineer
- no he is actually a doctor (he work as a doctor despite someone thing he is engineer)

while literally means `unbelievably in fact` or `but in fact` its hard to explain for me, maybe with exmples will be better
- he dont even know what is he saying
- he litterally work as an doctor, he knows what he is saying about (i cant explain perfectly meaning by a synonym)

- I cant believe he did it.
- Yes, he literally bailed out of the cliff (wow, its unbelivable but in fact)

"Literally" means without imagery or metaphor. Someone who takes everything literally is the kind of person who doesn't understand jokes or figurative expressions. They would be horrified to hear that it's raining "cats and dogs "
If you're trying to cheer them up, you might say, "Look up!" and they would raise their eyes to literally look up because they don't realize you're using a figure of speech which means "have hope that things will be better "
Some (maybe most?) people on the autism spectrum are like this, and you have to be careful not to confuse them with figurative language.
For example, an autistic man was asked if he was close with his brother, and his mother explained that the question was about emotional - not physical - proximity. Then he understood the meaning of the question, and that it had to do with his relationship with his brother..
There's a children's book series called Amelia Bedelia, which is about a character who takes everything literally. As you can imagine, This leads to some ridiculous situations.

"Actually" means really. You might hear a story in the news and it seems too crazy to have actually happened. Actual events are things like the Battle of Hastings in 1066, or Columbus arriving in the Bahamas in 1492, etc. If those events were just fake news, they didn't actually happen.
In the U.S., we have folk lore stories like John Henry beating a machine laying railroad ties. Did it actually happen? No, it's only a legend.
Sometimes, "actually" is used ironically, as in...
You never eat breakfast, but you're telling me that you actually ate it today!?