Literal

5 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  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]

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Literal \Lit"er*al\, n.
     Literal meaning. [Obs.] --Sir T. Browne.
     [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  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}, {real}]
       2: without interpretation or embellishment; "a literal
          translation of the scene before him"
       3: limited to the explicit meaning of a word or text; "a
          literal translation" [ant: {figurative}]
       4: 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}]
       5: of the clearest kind; usually used for emphasis; "it's the
          literal truth"; "a matter of investment, pure and simple"
          [syn: {pure and simple}]
       6: (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}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  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
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  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)