Myth vs Literal - What's the difference?
myth | literal |
A traditional story which embodies a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are personified; a sacred narrative regarding a god, a hero, the origin of the world or of a people, etc.
(uncountable) Such stories as a genre.
A commonly-held but false belief, a common misconception; a fictitious or imaginary person or thing; a popular conception about a real person or event which exaggerates or idealizes reality.
A person or thing held in excessive or quasi-religious awe or admiration based on popular legend
A person or thing existing only in imagination, or whose actual existence is not verifiable.
* Ld. Lytton
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]
As nouns the difference between myth and literal
is that myth is a traditional story which embodies a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are personified; a sacred narrative regarding a god, a hero, the origin of the world or of a people, etc while literal is a value, as opposed to an identifier, written into the source code of a computer program.As an adjective literal is
exactly as stated; read or understood without additional interpretation; according to the letter or verbal expression; real; not figurative or metaphorical.myth
English
Alternative forms
* mythe (rare or archaic)Noun
(en noun)- Myth was the product of man's emotion and imagination, acted upon by his surroundings.'' (E. Clodd, ''Myths & Dreams (1885), 7, cited after OED)
- Father Flanagan was legendary, his institution an American myth. (Tucson (Arizona) Citizen, 20 September 1979, 5A/3, cited after OED)
- As for Mrs. Primmins's bones, they had been myths these twenty years.
See also
* legendExternal links
* * ----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.
