Abstract: The object of this study is a polyfunctional word "literally". The subject of the study is the semantic and syntactic features of this lexeme, which determine its multifunctional character. The relevance of the research is due to its inclusion in the problems of studying the phenomenon of polyfunctionality in modern Russian. The purpose of the work is to establish the main types of use of the word literally, their morphological, syntactic, semantic qualification. From the point of view of pragmatics, the authors describe in detail the multifunctional lexeme literally, taking into account three grammatical implementations. The article comprehensively examines the syntagmatic characteristics of this unit using examples selected from the National Corpus of the Russian language. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that it presents for the first time all grammatical implementations of the word literally and their semantic and syntactic variants. It is established that the lexeme literally in modern Russian has three grammatical implementations: a short adjective of the neuter gender, an adverb and a particle, which differ based on syntactic properties and functions, but have an invariant semantic component ‘exact correspondence to words / the meaning of words’. It is proved that the main types of use of this word are an adverb and a particle connected by an intraverbial antonymy. The specificity of the types of adverb usage is determined up to the expansion of its syntagmatic and semantic possibilities. The revealed differences between the two types of particle use are syntagmatic and pragmatic. The results of the study can be used both in the study of other multifunctional units and in lexicographic practice.