One of my friends in college reasoned that it was the "royal they."

My answer was that most people aren't gender neutral, they are gender something

But we still need a word! There are plenty of times you don't know a gender, and you'd be being either inaccurate or rude by picking one.

Also, isn't it a long-time usage of it as gender neutral?

So no one's using "literal" to mean "figurative", they're just implying figurative every time.

Wait. I really think the second half of your sentence disproves the first half. If they're implying figurative-ness, then they *are* using "literal" to mean "figurative."

You left out the part where I shake my cane menacingly at the new kid.

No, I expect by that point in the future you'll be cyborgishly melded to a Segway to get around. Sort of a crabby, grammar correcting, prescriptivist Segway Centaur.

If they're implying figurative-ness, then they *are* using "literal" to mean "figurative."

I'm with Steph. Figurativeness is implied in the statement "it was hell inside that raincoat". By adding literally, you're saying "I know you would normally take that as a metaphor, but I truly mean what I said.

There are plenty of times you don't know a gender, and you'd be being either inaccurate or rude by picking one.

While I am sure there are exceptions, any time when you don't know an actual gender, you aren't talking about an actual person but a kind of general 'one' (as in 'the reader' or 'the patient'), in which case you can just make your subject plural ('readers' or 'patients') and be politically and grammatically correct at the same time.

Wait. I really think the second half of your sentence disproves the first half. If they're implying figurative-ness, then they *are* using "literal" to mean "figurative."

No. What I mean is that you can't misuse literal in that way without implying figurative. But there are lots of words you can use that imply figurative that aren't equivalent to it. Their primary meaning is something else. I posit that the misuse of literal is one of those.

be politically and grammatically correct at the same time

So you're saying it's grammatically incorrect too? I've read positions that go both ways. If I don't know the gender of the doctor, are you telling me to reframe the sentence so that I don't need pronouns because English has nothing to offer me? Do you support, then, the introduction of zie and hir and all those, or do you just figure we should say it some other way?

But there are lots of words you can use that imply figurative that aren't equivalent to it. Their primary meaning is something else. I posit that the misuse of literal is one of those.

I'm really confused here. The primary meaning of "literal" is not "figurative." But it's misused to mean "figurative." I thought we weren't initally agreeing but now I think we are?

Totally confused.

No, what I'm saying (really badly) is that when I misuse "literally" I'm not using it as an equivalent to "figuratively".

Which is to say, when I said "it's literally hell in that raincoat" I couldn't have equivalently said "it's figuratively hell in that raincoat". It's not a one for one substitution. However, every time I misuse literally, I am indeed implying figuratively. However, I'm implying figuratively with a whole lot of words that don't actually just mean that.

If what you initially meant was that you can't misuse literally without implying its opposite as well (even though that's not the main point of the misuse), then we agree.

If I don't know the gender of the doctor, are you telling me to reframe the sentence so that I don't need pronouns because English has nothing to offer me?

Or assign him a gender at random and be done with it.

I can assure you that 98.9% of my students are not experiencing the need you express here of precisely and exactly defining the parameters of their knowledge. They are just trying to get the damn paper finished by midnight.