Crossword clues for literal
literal
- Not figurative
- To the letter
- Matter-of-fact
- Accurate misprint
- Absolute fabrication about temperature - I must leave bar
- Word for word
- Avoiding embellishment
- Lo-cal treacle taken regularly, as stated on the tin
- In 50/50, is tie break oddly strict?
- Dull drunk left on time
- True to fact
- Without exaggeration
- Not metaphorical
- Unlike idioms
- Tell IRA (anag) — word for word
- Interpretation type
- Hardly figurative
- Verbatim
- Not loose
- Like some meanings
- Precise
- Exact
- Without metaphor
- Not exaggerated
- Like some translations or interpretations
- Completely straightforward
- Like some interpretations
- Strict
- A mistake in printed matter resulting from mechanical failures of some kind
- Word-for-word
- Far from figurative
- Actual
- Prosaic
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Literal \Lit"er*al\, n.
Literal meaning. [Obs.]
--Sir T. Browne.
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.]
-
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. -
Following the letter or exact words; not free.
A middle course between the rigor of literal translations and the liberty of paraphrasts.
--Hooker. -
Consisting of, or expressed by, letters.
The literal notation of numbers was known to Europeans before the ciphers.
--Johnson. -
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.
--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.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
late 14c., "taking words in their natural meaning" (originally in reference to Scripture and opposed to mystical or allegorical), from Old French literal and directly from Late Latin literalis/litteralis "of or belonging to letters or writing," from Latin litera/littera "letter, alphabetic sign; literature, books" (see letter (n.1)). Meaning "of or pertaining to alphabetic letters" is from late 15c. Sense of "verbally exact" is attested from 1590s, as is application to the primary sense of a word or passage. Literal-minded is attested from 1791.
Wiktionary
a. 1 Exactly as stated; read or understand without additional interpretation; according to the letter or verbal expression; real; not figurative or metaphorical. 2 follow the letter or exact words; not free; not taking liberties. 3 (context uncommon English) Consisting of, or expressed by, letters. 4 (context of a person English) Giving a strict or literal construction; unimaginative; matter-of-fact. n. 1 (context programming English) A value, as opposed to an identifier, written into the source code of a computer program. 2 (context logic English) A propositional calculus variable or the negation of a propositional variable.
WordNet
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" [syn: actual, genuine, real]
without interpretation or embellishment; "a literal translation of the scene before him"
limited to the explicit meaning of a word or text; "a literal translation" [ant: figurative]
lacking stylistic embellishment; "a literal description"; "wrote good but plain prose"; "a plain unadorned account of the coronation"; "a forthright unembellished style" [syn: plain, unembellished]
of the clearest kind; usually used for emphasis; "it's the literal truth"; "a matter of investment, pure and simple" [syn: pure and simple]
(of a translation) corresponding word for word with the original; "literal translation of the article"; "an awkward word-for-word translation" [syn: word-for-word]
n. a mistake in printed matter resulting from mechanical failures of some kind [syn: misprint, erratum, typographical error, typo, literal error]
Wikipedia
Literal may refer to:
- Interpretation of legal concepts:
- Strict constructionism
- The plain meaning rule (AKA "literal rule")
- Literal (mathematical logic), certain logical roles taken by propositions
- Literal (computer programming), value that is fixed by its coding within the program using it
- Titled works:
- Literal (magazine)
- Three-issue series The Literals, in Fables comics franchise
In computer science, a literal is a notation for representing a fixed value in source code. Almost all programming languages have notations for atomic values such as integers, floating-point numbers, and strings, and usually for booleans and characters; some also have notations for elements of enumerated types and compound values such as arrays, records, and objects. An anonymous function is a literal for the function type.
In contrast to literals, variables or constants are symbols that can take on one of a class of fixed values, the constant being constrained not to change. Literals are often used to initialize variables, for example, in the following, 1 is an integer literal and the three letter string in "cat" is a string literal:
int a = 1; String s = "cat";In lexical analysis, literals of a given type are generally a token type, with a grammar rule, like "a string of digits" for an integer literal. Some literals are specific keywords, like true for the boolean literal "true".
In some object-oriented languages (like ECMAScript), objects can also be represented by literals. Methods of this object can be specified in the object literal using function literals. The brace notation below, which is also used for array literals, is typical for object literals:
{"cat","dog"} {name:"cat",length:57}Literal: Latin American Voices is a quarterly cultural magazine focusing on art, architecture, literature, politics, culture, writers, intellectualism and current world events. It publishes most of its articles in both English and Spanish. It distributes nationwide in Mexico, the United States and Canada.
In mathematical logic, a literal is an atomic formula (atom) or its negation. The definition mostly appears in proof theory (of classical logic), e.g. in conjunctive normal form and the method of resolution.
Literals can be divided into two types:
- A positive literal is just an atom.
- A negative literal is the negation of an atom.
For a literal l, the complementary literal is a literal corresponding to the negation of l, we can write l̄ to denote the complementary literal of l. More precisely, if l ≡ x then l̄ is ¬x and if l ≡ ¬x then l̄ is x.
In the context of a formula in the conjunctive normal form, a literal is pure if the literal's complement does not appear in the formula.
Usage examples of "literal".
Or, if you want to be literal, the shrouded shape of something that almost looked like a Buick 8-cylinder.
The sudden appearance of a figure shift would abruptly convert a literal cryptogram into one of numbers and punctuation marks.
It was a building in the literal sense of the gerund, for it was always building itself out of impossibility.
CHAPTER XXVIII The Ironmaster Sir Leicester Dedlock has got the better, for the time being, of the family gout and is once more, in a literal no less than in a figurative point of view, upon his legs.
It was cut and try, with a literal infinity of choices and just a few jackleg estimates to rule out some of the possibilities.
James with his literal mind provided this game with an aggressor, a defender, and the final extraction by coercion or violence of the first osculatory contact.
As no man of his own self catches 455 The itch, or amorous French aches So no man does himself convince, By his own doctrine, of his sins And though all cry down self, none means His ownself in a literal sense.
Whoever has meditated on philosophy, purified himself by virtue, and raised himself by contemplation, to God and the intellectual world, and received their inspiration, pierces the gross envelope of the letter, discovers a wholly different order of things, and is initiated into mysteries, of which the elementary or literal instruction offers but an imperfect image.
The former, selected from the more opulent and distinguished ranks of society, were strictly attached to the literal sense of the Mosaic law, and they piously rejected the immortality of the soul, as an opinion that received no countenance from the divine book, which they revered as the only rule of their faith.
He feels that you should adhere as closely as possible to the English text without making your translation so literal as to be un-German and unidiomatic, and therefore not very readable to German-speaking people.
It could not have been viewed by them in the light of a theory or a legend, nor, indeed, as any thing else than a marvellous but literal fact.
The kill floor was a literal sea of blood, pieces of internal organs, vomitus, and watery cow diarrhea.
An unusual whydunit in the rare literal use of the term, this novel takes an unsentimental and ultimately unsettling look at family dynamics.
The worthy friend of Athanasius, the worthy antagonist of Julian, he bravely wrestled with the Arians and Polytheists, and though he affected the rigor of geometrical demonstration, his commentaries revealed the literal and allegorical sense of the Scriptures.
The physiologist might assert the necessary seclusion of physiological experimentation, or he might construe the question in a literal sense as pertaining merely to the locking of his inner door.