1 [usuallybeforenoun] being the basic or usual meaning of a word or phrase:
His story is incredible in the literal sense of the word (= it is impossible to believe it). * What is the literal meaning of this word?
compareFIGURATIVE, METAPHORICAL
2 [usuallybeforenoun] that follows the original words exactly:
a literal translation * a literal transcript of a speech
compareFREE
3 (disapproving) lacking imagination:
Her interpretation of the music was too literal.
literalness noun [U]
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for literal is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is literal a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, literal is tagged as adjective.
Does literal appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — literal appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
