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Literal   /lˈɪtərəl/   Listen
adjective
Literal  adj.  
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."
2.
Following the letter or exact words; not free. "A middle course between the rigor of literal translations and the liberty of paraphrasts."
3.
Consisting of, or expressed by, letters. "The literal notation of numbers was known to Europeans before the ciphers."
4.
Giving a strict or literal construction; unimaginative; matter-of-fact; applied to persons.
Literal contract (Law), a contract of which the whole evidence is given in writing.
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.



noun
Literal  n.  Literal meaning. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Literal" Quotes from Famous Books



... at best, of all the money in your pocket, and if you stay late, very probably robbed of your watch and snuff-box, possibly murdered for greater security. This I can assure you, is not an exaggerated, but a literal description of what happens every day to some raw and inexperienced stranger at Paris. Remember to receive all these civil gentlemen, who take such a fancy to you at first sight, very coldly, and take care always ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... father most about his pupils was the picturesqueness and originality of their language. He never wanted a literal repetition of bookish expressions, and particularly encouraged every one to speak "out of his own head." I remember how once he stopped a boy who was ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy

... An Historical Collection of State Papers, and other authentic Documents, intended as Materials for a History of the United States of America, by Ebenezer Hasard. The first volume of this compilation, which was printed at Philadelphia in 1792, contains a literal copy of all the charters granted by the crown of England to the emigrants, as well as the principal acts of the colonial governments, during the commencement of their existence. Among other authentic documents, we ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... about the origin of the race—our business is with the question What is he? rather than with the inquiry, Whence did he come? The shortest argument, however—and, if the assumption be admitted, the most conclusive—is that, which assumes the literal truth of the Mosaic account of the creation of man; for from this it directly follows, that the aboriginal races are descendants of Asiatic emigrants; and the minor questions, as to the route they followed—whether across the ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... experience. An Essene he never became, but he remained throughout his life very partial to certain forms of the Essene belief, more especially those which coincided with the Greco-Roman superstitions of the time, such as the literal prediction of future events, the meaning of dreams, the significance of omens.[2] These ideas, handed down from primitive Israel, had lived on among the masses of the people, though discarded by the learned teachers, and Josephus, finding them in vogue among ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich


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