Sorry could not resist. And when talking about trolleybuses they probably think it is a big shopping trolley because when they see the first time a real trolleybus that is a spiderbus for them. (Yeah the latter one really happened.)
True, and I might perform such a sampling under certain conditions, for example as a master linguist working on my PhD thesis. But as the other poster responded, it is idiomatic and there really are no hard and fast lists of definitions for these things. I will say that in my experience, ESL speakers here that I know use the term as literally EVERY now and EVERY then which, literally, should mean “always”. I look at it this way: The Philippines is one of the largest English speaking languages in the world. Of course, India is the largest English speaking nation. The USA may be number 2, the Philippines number 3 and the others, such as Canada, Australia and England way down on the list. With the Philippines at such a prominent ranking they are entitled to their own dialectical phrases. Their use of English is correct in whatever local definition they use because they are big; no Australian, Canadian or Englishman has standing to correct them :comedyonlydontgetmad; And you are correct, it does matter what the majority think even if my brother-in-law doesn’t care Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Agreed: In these times, considering the political situation and the new found nationalism of the people, silence, low profile and near invisibility during potentially confrontation situations is often best. Besides, many of us have Filipina gf’s and asawas who can and will intervene when needed (thank the Lord!). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
And along those lines, the word "literally" itself is one of the words most misused by fluent English speakers. Technically, the definition is "In a literal manner or sense; exactly." In other words, the exact opposite of "figuratively". But it's used in the exact opposite way so frequently e.g. "He literally exploded with rage", "Those sale items are literally flying off the shelves" that an alternate or "informal" definition is now often included in dictionaries: literally | Definition of literally in English by Oxford Dictionaries
It seems to mostly be a child/teenage way of speaking. Shame is a powerful thing for that age group. Show them that video and they usually stop.