Adjacent Words

Literal definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

LIT'ERAL, a. [L. litera, a letter.]
1. According to the letter; primitive; real; not figurative or metaphorical; as the literal meaning of a phrase.
2. Following the letter or exact words; not free; as a literal translation.
3. Consisting of letters.
The literal notation of numbers was known to Europeans before the ciphers.
LIT'ERAL, n. Literal meaning. [Not used.]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: 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" [syn: actual, genuine, literal, real]
2: without interpretation or embellishment; "a literal depiction of the scene before him"
3: limited to the explicit meaning of a word or text; "a literal translation" [ant: figurative, nonliteral]
4: avoiding embellishment or exaggeration (used for emphasis); "it's the literal truth" n
1: a mistake in printed matter resulting from mechanical failures of some kind [syn: misprint, erratum, typographical error, typo, literal error, literal]

Merriam Webster's

I. adjective Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Medieval Latin litteralis, from Latin, of a letter, from littera letter Date: 14th century 1. a. according with the letter of the scriptures b. adhering to fact or to the ordinary construction or primary meaning of a term or expression ; actual <liberty in the literal sense is impossible — B. N. Cardozo> c. free from exaggeration or embellishment <the literal truth> d. characterized by a concern mainly with facts <a very literal man> 2. of, relating to, or expressed in letters 3. reproduced word for word ; exact, verbatim <a literal translation> • literality noun • literalness noun II. noun Date: 1622 a small error usually of a single letter (as in writing)

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. & n. --adj. 1 taking words in their usual or primary sense without metaphor or allegory (literal interpretation). 2 following the letter, text, or exact or original words (literal translation; a literal transcript). 3 (in full literal-minded) (of a person) prosaic; matter of fact. 4 a not exaggerated (the literal truth). b so called without exaggeration (a literal extermination). 5 colloq. disp. so called with some exaggeration or using metaphor (a literal avalanche of mail). 6 of, in, or expressed by a letter or the letters of the alphabet. 7 Algebra not numerical. --n. Printing a misprint of a letter. Derivatives: literality n. literalize v.tr. (also -ise). literally adv. literalness n. Etymology: ME f. OF literal or LL litteralis f. L littera (as LETTER)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Literal Lit"er*al, n. Literal meaning. [Obs.] --Sir T. Browne.

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Literal 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.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. The literal sense of a word or phrase is its most basic sense. In many cases, the people there are fighting, in a literal sense, for their homes. ADJ: usu ADJ n 2. A literal translation is one in which you translate each word of the original work rather than giving the meaning of each expression or sentence using words that sound natural. A literal translation of the name Tapies is 'walls.' ADJ: usu ADJ n 3. You use literal to describe someone who uses or understands words in a plain and simple way. Dennis is a very literal person. ADJ 4. If you describe something as the literal truth or a literal fact, you are emphasizing that it is true. He was saying no more than the literal truth. ADJ: usu ADJ n [emphasis]

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. 1. As regards letters, by letter. 2. According to the exact meaning, following the exact words, strict, exact, verbatim. 3. Following the exact words.

Moby Thesaurus

Christian, abecedarian, accepted, allographic, alphabetic, approved, arid, authentic, authoritative, barren, basic, bona fide, boring, candid, canonical, capital, card-carrying, 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