Language Police, Episode II

I recently heard an NPR reporter say that one company had literally cleaned the clock of another company. Now, this reporter was not saying anything about the companies’ mutual attention to timepiece hygiene. She was saying that company A defeated company B soundly in the marketplace. So, by literally she meant, well, its exact opposite: figuratively.*

Idiom, metaphor, slang, and overall flexibility are essential to any language. But there must be a safety line, a direct grounding to reality at some point. A way to say, "seriously, I am not kidding." Otherwise, when you cry "wolf," no one will believe you. This is the essential function of the word literally, and no other word has its gravitas.

To borrow a concept from BDSM, I liken literally to a safeword.
In sexual roleplay, the dominated partner may scream "stop" but not
really mean it. It’s all part of the game. So ahead of time, all
participants agree on a safeword that the bottom can say to halt the
scene immediately. Violating a safeword can enter you into a very
dangerous game, psychologically and physically.

Violating the sanctity of literally enters us into a very
dangerous game linguistically and epistemologically. Misuse it once in
a while, and it loses all meaning.

So, guys, can literally remain our safeword? Please?

*Ok, to be fair, people do not usually use literally expressly to mean figuratively.
In its common misuse, the word is not employed to make a claim about
the literalness or figurativeness of a statement, but merely the extent
to which the statement applies, while still assuming it is to be taken
figuratively. Safety tip: The English language has numerous words to indicate
extreme extent. Literally is not one of them.

Update:
I was told this morning, March 21, that one of the office
printers "literally blew up." I checked it out, expecting cracked
plastic and singed electronics, and it looked undamaged. (Someone told
me that it was, however, spilling some blue toner from a cartridge on the
inside.) The use of literally as an intensive before a figurative expression,
as in the clock example above, is perhaps not so confusing/dangerous as
it is obnoxious and bad form. But using it here (a more ambiguous
situation) means that the next time someone tells me that something
blew up (whether "literally" or not), I will have to question what he
means. Language will have failed. I dread the day when one must say
"literally literally" or "literally literally literally" to mean
literally.

Update 2:
OED editor Jesse Sheidlower makes a strong case for the use of literally as an intensifier in this Slate essay, based on arguments logical, historical, and literary. (If Joyce, Austen, and Fitzgerald jumped off a bridge, would I? Hmmmm….) He concludes with:

The one sensible criticism that can be made about the intensive use of literally is that it can often lead to confusing or silly-sounding results. In this case, the answer is simple: Don’t write silly-soundingly. Some usage books even bother to make this point about literally. Then again, most usage advice could be reduced to one simple instruction: "Be clear." But that would be the end of a publishing category.

It’s SO HARD trading peeves for moderation, but language evolves, and so can I. Well, we’ll see what happens.