LITERAL
LITERAL.
1. A term traditionally opposed to figurative and metaphorical. Although it is generally unrelated to LETTERS, LITERACY, and LITERATURE, it suggests the influence of the letter as a measure of strictness and rightness: the literal truth is seen as being true in a basic and absolute way. If something is done literally, a person follows instructions ‘to the letter’, without flexibility or imagination. Paradoxically, however, the adverb literally is often used to mean figuratively: ‘And with his eyes he literally scoured the corners of the cell’ ( Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading, 1960). See FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE.
2. A term in proof-reading for a misprint such as the substitution of one letter for another, the omission or addition of a letter, or letters transposed (for example, parodixical, responsiblity, assumed, phenonemon, prniter).
1. A term traditionally opposed to figurative and metaphorical. Although it is generally unrelated to LETTERS, LITERACY, and LITERATURE, it suggests the influence of the letter as a measure of strictness and rightness: the literal truth is seen as being true in a basic and absolute way. If something is done literally, a person follows instructions ‘to the letter’, without flexibility or imagination. Paradoxically, however, the adverb literally is often used to mean figuratively: ‘And with his eyes he literally scoured the corners of the cell’ ( Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading, 1960). See FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE.
2. A term in proof-reading for a misprint such as the substitution of one letter for another, the omission or addition of a letter, or letters transposed (for example, parodixical, responsiblity, assumed, phenonemon, prniter).
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LITERAL