A player on Big Brother said that both her parents ran track and so she was “literally born on the track”. Unless your mother went into labour on the track and gave birth right there, you were not literally born on the track!
A player on Big Brother said that both her parents ran track and so she was “literally born on the track”. Unless your mother went into labour on the track and gave birth right there, you were not literally born on the track!
Except that in usage it’s almost never unclear and the use of ‘literally’ in place of ‘figuratively’ adds emphasis. So if anything it adds meaning. “Literally born on the track” is a good example - the meaning is clearly ‘figuratively’. And the image of popping out of the womb onto a running surface adds emphasis and humour.
Contronyms - words that can also mean their opposite - are just a phenomenon of language. Cleave is the common example. You can cleave to or cleave in two.