literal : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

English Dictionary: literal	by the DICT Development Group
4 results for literal
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
literal 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" Synonym(s): actual, genuine, literal, real without interpretation or embellishment; "a literal depiction of the scene before him" limited to the explicit meaning of a word or text; "a literal translation" Antonym(s): figurative, nonliteral avoiding embellishment or exaggeration (used for emphasis); "it's the literal truth" n a mistake in printed matter resulting from mechanical failures of some kind Synonym(s): misprint, erratum, typographical error, typo, literal error, literal
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Literal \Lit"eral\, a. [F. lit[82]ral, litt[82]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. It hath but one simple literal sense whose light the owls can not abide. --Tyndale. 2. Following the letter or exact words; not free. A middle course between the rigor of literal translations and the liberty of paraphrasts. --Hooker. 3. Consisting of, or expressed by, letters. The literal notation of numbers was known to Europeans before the ciphers. --Johnson. 4. Giving a strict or literal construction; unimaginative; matter-of fast; -- applied to persons. {Literal contract} (Law), 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.
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]:
Literal \Lit"eral\, n. Literal* meaning. [Obs.] --Sir T. Browne.
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (15Feb98) [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)