Meaning of literal in English

literal

adjective

/ˈlɪt.ər.əl/ us

/ˈlɪt̬.ɚ.əl/

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The literal meaning of a word is its original, basic meaning:

The literal meaning of "television" is "seeing from a distance".

You will need to show more than just a literal understanding of the text.

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figurative (LANGUAGE)

A literal translation of a text is done by translating each word separately, without looking at how the words are used together in a phrase or sentence:

Her translation is too literal, resulting in unnatural-sounding prose.

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(Definition of literal from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

literal | American Dictionary

literal

adjective

/ˈlɪt̬·ər·əl/

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having exactly the same meaning as the basic or original meaning of a word or expression:

a literal interpretation of the Constitution

A literal translation of a phrase in another language gives the meaning of each separate word.

(Definition of literal from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of literal

literal

Within this framework, positive relevance literals denote addition of complexity and detail whilst negative relevance literals denote removal of complexity and detail.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

We assume we have a set of items of structured text, and that we will represent these by a set of positive literals.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

We represent each news report as a conjunction of classical logic literals.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Our extended definition and the classical one coincide either for definite programs or for general programs whose negative literals have only input positions.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The two definitions coincide either for definite programs or for general programs whose negative literals have only input positions.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Sets of default negated literals are considered as extensions of the program, and a notion of "attack" between these sets is defined.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Intuitively the truth of literals in these sequences must be determined in order to prove or fail the abductive subgoal.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Elementary formulas are literals and the symbols ("false") and ("true").

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Defining tightness relative to a set of literals extends the applicability of this method to some programs that are not absolutely tight.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Their bodies usually contain special fluent literals of the form ab(c).

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Elementary formulas are literals and the 0-place connectives ("false") and ("true").

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The body of rules is composed of negative literals only.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Nevertheless, for the cases in which there are no conflicting literals in the first of the programs, the operators in question would be equivalent.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The first four rules define literals and contrary literals.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

One of the main reasons is that, for each predicate mode declaration, the compiler is required to appropriately re-order literals in the predicate's definition.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

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These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of literal?

Translations of literal

in Chinese (Traditional)

（意義）字面的，根本的, 逐字（翻譯）的…

Meaning of literal in English

literal | American Dictionary

Examples of literal

Translations of literal

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