Does literally now mean figuratively?

The scandal is older than everyone's grandparents. Using literally as a pure intensifier, I literally died, appears in writers including Twain, Joyce, Dickens, and Fitzgerald, and dictionaries have acknowledged the sense for many decades. When Merriam-Webster's entry went viral and people accused it of surrendering, the editors pointed out they were describing usage documented since the 1700s.

There is also a comforting pattern here: English intensifiers routinely start as literal words and wear down. Really once meant in reality, very comes from the Latin for true, and truly made the same trip. Literally is simply the current word on that old conveyor belt, and hyperbole, saying I died to mean I laughed hard, is not confusion, it is a figure of speech listeners decode instantly.

That said, register matters: in precise writing, literally should mean literally, because the ambiguity there is real. Everywhere else, the battle is over, and it was lost before you were born.