[syn: actual, genuine, literal, real]
2. without interpretation or embellishment;
- Example: "a literal depiction of the scene before him"
3. limited to the explicit meaning of a word or text;
- Example: "a literal translation"
4. avoiding embellishment or exaggeration (used for emphasis);
- Example: "it's the literal truth"
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Literal \Lit"er*al\ (l[i^]t"[~e]r*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.
[1913 Webster]
It hath but one simple literal sense whose light the
owls can not abide. --Tyndale.
[1913 Webster]
2. Following the letter or exact words; not free.
[1913 Webster]
A middle course between the rigor of literal
translations and the liberty of paraphrasts.
--Hooker.
[1913 Webster]
3. Consisting of, or expressed by, letters.
[1913 Webster]
The literal notation of numbers was known to
Europeans before the ciphers. --Johnson.
[1913 Webster]
4. Giving a strict or literal construction; unimaginative;
matter-of-fact; -- applied to persons.
[1913 Webster]
Literal contract (Law), a 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.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:
Literal \Lit"er*al\, n.
Literal meaning. [Obs.] --Sir T. Browne.
[1913 Webster]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):
literal
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]
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0:
150 Moby Thesaurus words for "literal":
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
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
literal
A constant made available to a process, by
inclusion in the executable text. Most modern systems do not
allow texts to modify themselves during execution, so literals
are indeed constant; their value is written at compile-time
and is read-only at run time.
In contrast, values placed in variables or files and accessed
by the process via a symbolic name, can be changed during
execution. This may be an asset. For example, messages can
be given in a choice of languages by placing the translation
in a file.
Literals are used when such modification is not desired. The
name of the file mentioned above (not its content), or a
physical constant such as 3.14159, might be coded as a
literal. Literals can be accessed quickly, a potential
advantage of their use.
(1996-01-23)