The OP is fine. You're being overly pedantic. People have been using the word this way for (literally) hundreds of years.
Moreover, the truly literal definition of the word is from the Latin for "letter" and means something like "letter-for-letter truth." So using this word to describe anything other than a written document is "wrong" on some level. But language doesn't really work that way.
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Is that a joke, or are you unfamiliar with the many definitions of power?
It was a joke (a bad one, clearly), but it was at the definition of the word literally. The OP presumably meant figuratively.
Using a different definition of the word power doesn't make it any less literal.
The OP is fine. You're being overly pedantic. People have been using the word this way for (literally) hundreds of years.
Moreover, the truly literal definition of the word is from the Latin for "letter" and means something like "letter-for-letter truth." So using this word to describe anything other than a written document is "wrong" on some level. But language doesn't really work that way.
Google "definition literally". It's depressing, but that's the way the cookie bounces: language mutates, for better and for worse.
You could say "for all intents and purposes" or "practically".