Literal

How to spell literal

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce literal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does literal mean?

1. adjectiveTaking words in their plain, exact sense, without exaggeration or metaphor.

Literal in a sentence

• The manual gives a literal description of each safety step.

• A literal translation of the contract preserved every original phrase.

Where does literal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin litteralis, meaning 'of or belonging to letters', which was built directly on littera, the ordinary Latin noun for a single letter of the alphabet. English took it in through Old French in the late 1300s, where it first described things relating to the written letters themselves rather than to spoken sound. From there the sense narrowed to mean following the exact words of a text, and then broadened to its modern idea of taking words in their plain, factual meaning rather than as figure of speech. The same littera root sits inside familiar relatives like 'literature', 'literacy' and 'obliterate', the last of which literally meant to strike letters out. The single t in literal is a frequent spelling trap, since people half remember the double t of its Latin ancestor.

How the word is built

• liter- (from littera: letter of the alphabet)
• -al (adjective suffix)