Meanings
- not comparablerareRegarding letters of the alphabet.
1 more example
[A certain effect is achieved] by a letter, by “old man R”, as the master agent is alone named[…]Thus, when Hitchcock repeats certain names and syllabic or even letteral patterns across his films, they appear to link up in active networks[…]Such repetitions isolate specific signifiers—individual letters or letteral clusters, sounds[…], visual “puns”, and citations—which may operate like monadic and nomadic switchboards whose proliferation continues to alter the afterlife not only of the film texts themselves[…]but the literary or cultural mnemonics that they have become embedded in.
2001, Tom Cohen, “Political Thrillers: Hitchcock, de Man, and Secret Agency in the "Aesthetic State"”, in Material events: Paul de Man and the afterlife of theory, page 117
plural letterals
- obsoletemediaObsolete form of literal (“a misprint that affects a letter”).
LITERALS type characters: to read proof for literals is to read letter for letter, watching for proper spelling, punctuation, etc., as well as for typos: formerly spelled letterals.
[1971, Ruth Kimball Kent, The Language of Journalism: A Glossary of Print-communications Terms, page 821 more example
In order to avoid the character of being slovenly, always read the lines as composed. This should be done as soon as they are finished and before spacing out; in time the habit will become so fixed, that in spacing out, or even in composing the line, the eye will wander over the words, and detect any letterals.
1898, Charles Thomas Jacobi, Printing: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Typography as Applied More Particularly to the Printing of Books, pages 57–58
Origin
From letter + -al. The Lojban sense was coined by James Cooke Brown by analogy with numeral.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
letteral. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/letteral
“letteral.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/letteral. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “letteral,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/letteral.
Source: letteral on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.