About The Word Literal

Bay Area Crosswords

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Literal

Literal Meaning & Definition
Literal Definition And Meaning

What's The Definition Of Literal?

[n] a mistake in printed matter resulting from mechanical failures of some kind
[adj] without interpretation or embellishment; "a literal translation of the scene before him"
[adj] (of a translation) corresponding word for word with the original; "literal translation of the article"; "an awkward word-for-word translation"
[adj] limited to the explicit meaning of a word or text; "a literal translation"
[adj] of the clearest kind; usually used for emphasis; "it's the literal truth"; "a matter of investment, pure and simple"
[adj] lacking stylistic embellishment; "a literal description"; "wrote good but plain prose"; "a plain unadorned account of the coronation"; "a forthright unembellished style"
[adj] being or reflecting the essential or genuine character of something; "her actual motive"; "a literal solitude like a desert"- G.K.Chesterton; "a genuine dilemma"

Synonyms | Synonyms for Literal: actual | denotative | erratum | exact | explicit | genuine | literal error | misprint | plain | pure and simple | real | true | typo | typographical error | unembellished | word-for-word

Related Terms | Find terms related to Literal: abecedarian | accepted | allographic | alphabetic | approved | arid | authentic | authoritative | barren | basic | bona fide | boring | candid | canonical | capital | card-carrying | Christian | colorless | conventional | correct | customary | denotative | dictionary | dinkum | down-to-earth | dry | dull | earthbound | essential | etymological | evangelical | exact | faithful | firm | following the letter | genuine | good | graphemic | honest | honest-to-God | humdrum | ideographic | inartificial | infecund | infertile | lawful | legitimate | lettered | lexical | lexigraphic | lifelike | literatim | logogrammatic | logographic | lower-case | majuscule | matter-of-fact | minuscular | minuscule | mundane | natural | naturalistic | objective | of the faith | original | orthodox | orthodoxical | pictographic | precise | proper | prosaic | prosing | prosy | pure | real | realistic | received | right | rightful | scriptural | semantic | simon-pure | simple | simplistic | sincere | sound | staid | standard | sterling | stolid | strict | stuffy | sure-enough | tedious | textual | traditional | traditionalistic | transliterated | true | true to life | true to nature | true to reality | true-blue | unadulterated | unaffected | unassumed | unassuming | unbiased | uncial | uncolored | uncomplicated | unconcocted | uncopied | uncounterfeited | undisguised | undisguising | undistorted | unembellished | unexaggerated | unfabricated | unfanciful | unfeigned | unfeigning | unfictitious | unflattering | unideal | unimaginative | unimagined | unimitated | uninspired | uninvented | uninventive | unoriginal | unpoetic | unprejudiced | unpretended | unpretending | unqualified | unromantic | unromanticized | unsimulated | unspecious | unsynthetic | unvarnished | upper-case | verbal | verbatim | veridical | verisimilar | word-for-word

See Also | error | mistake | unrhetorical

Literal In Webster's Dictionary

\Lit"er*al\, a. [F. lit['e]ral, litt['e]ral, L. litteralis, literalis, fr. littera, litera, a letter. See {Letter}.] 1. According to the letter or verbal expression; real; not figurative or metaphorical; as, the literal meaning of a phrase. It hath but one simple literal sense whose light the owls can not abide. --Tyndale. 2. Following the letter or exact words; not free. A middle course between the rigor of literal translations and the liberty of paraphrasts. --Hooker. 3. Consisting of, or expressed by, letters. The literal notation of numbers was known to Europeans before the ciphers. --Johnson. 4. Giving a strict or literal construction; unimaginative; matter-of fast; -- applied to persons. {Literal contract} (Law), contract of which the whole evidence is given in writing. --Bouvier. {Literal equation} (Math.), an equation in which known quantities are expressed either wholly or in part by means of letters; -- distinguished from a numerical equation.
\Lit"er*al\, n. Literal meaning. [Obs.] --Sir T. Browne.

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