Letteral
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Obsolete form of literal (“a misprint that affects a letter”). alt-of, obsolete
"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."
- 2 The name of a letter, such as gy. for the letter G. Lojban
- 1 Referring to a type of musical notation used by Shakers, based on letters instead of notes. historical, not-comparable
- 2 Regarding letters of the alphabet. not-comparable, rare
"[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."
Example
More examples"[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."
Etymology
From letter + -al. The Lojban sense was coined by James Cooke Brown by analogy with numeral.
More for "letteral"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.