What is the difference between literal and denotation?
literal | denotation |
Exactly as stated; read or understood without additional interpretation; according to the letter or verbal expression; real; not figurative or metaphorical.
* Hooker
Following the letter or exact words; not free; not taking liberties.
(uncommon) Consisting of, or expressed by, letters.
* Johnson
(of a person) Giving a strict or literal construction; unimaginative; matter-of-fact.
(programming) A value, as opposed to an identifier, written into the source code of a computer program.
(logic) A propositional variable or the negation of a propositional variable.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_%28logic%29]
The act of denoting, or something (such as a symbol) that denotes
(logic, linguistics, semiotics) The primary, literal, or explicit meaning of a word, phrase, or symbol; that which a word denotes, as contrasted with its connotation; the aggregate or set of objects of which a word may be predicated.
(philosophy, logic) The intension and extension of a word
(semantics) Something signified or referred to; a particular meaning of a symbol
(semiotics) The surface or literal meaning encoded to a signifier, and the definition most likely to appear in a dictionary
(computer science) Any mathematical object which describes the meanings of expressions from the languages, formalized in the theory of denotational semantics
(media-studies) A first level of analysis: what the audience can visually see on a page. Denotation often refers to something literal, and avoids being a metaphor.
As nouns the difference between literal and denotation
is that literal is {{context|programming|lang=en}} a value, as opposed to an identifier, written into the source code of a computer program while denotation is the act of denoting, or something (such as a symbol) that denotes.As a adjective literal
is exactly as stated; read or understood without additional interpretation; according to the letter or verbal expression; real; not figurative or metaphorical.literal
Alternative forms
* litteral (obsolete)Adjective
(en adjective)- The literal translation is “hands full of bananas” but it means empty-handed.
- a middle course between the rigour of literal translation and the liberty of paraphrasts
- A literal reading of the law would prohibit it, but that is clearly not the intent.
- a literal equation
- The literal notation of numbers was known to Europeans before the ciphers.
Antonyms
* (exactly as stated) figurativeNoun
(en noun)See also
* constant * prime formulaExternal links
* *Anagrams
* ----denotation
English
(wikipedia denotation)Noun
(en noun)- The denotations of the two expressions "the morning star" and "the evening star" are the same (i.e. both expressions denote the planet Venus), but their connotations are different.