Dictionary

literalism en · NOUN

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂leyH-der. Old Latin leitera Latin līterader.? Proto-Hellenic *dipʰtʰérā? Ancient Greek διφθέρᾱ (diphthérā)bor. Etruscan [Term?]bor.? Latin littera Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- Proto-Indo-European *-is Proto-Indo-European *h₂élisder.? Proto-Italic *-ālis Latin -ālis Late Latin litterālisbor. Old French literalbor. Middle English literal English literal Proto-Indo-European *-id- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti Proto-Hellenic *-íd͏̌d͏̌ō Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō) Proto-Indo-European *-mos Proto-Indo-European *-mós Ancient Greek -μός (-mós) Ancient Greek -ισμός (-ismós)der. English -ism English literalism From literal + -ism.

Meanings

1. (uncountable, usually) Literal interpretation or understanding; adherence to the exact letter or precise significance, as in interpreting or translating.
   • Furthermore, what would otherwise be good points about the sort of selective literalism that renders homosexuality an unpardonable sin but shrugs off Sarah Palin’s biblically forbidden pearl earrings are lost in Eichenwald’s assumption that evangelicals make these decisions “with less care than they exercise in selecting side orders for lunch.” 2015 January 6, Rachel Held Evans, “What Newsweek gets wrong about evangelicals”, in CNN:
   • Elsewhere, the liturgiologists were said to have "disembowelled the language of the Book of Common Prayer and the Bible" and produced in its place "the bland literalisms of Series 3 and the ASB[.]" 1985, Robert Burchfield, The English Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 73:
   • Literal interpretation has always been a marked feature of Premillennialism; in Dispensationalism it has been carried to an extreme. We have seen that this literalism found its most thoroughgoing expression in the claim that Israel must mean Israel, that it cannot mean the Church, that the Old Testament prophecies regarding Israel concern the earthly Israel, and that the Church was a mystery, unknown to the prophets and first made known to the apostle Paul. Now if the principle of interpretation is adopted that Israel always means Israel, that it does not mean the Church, then it follows of necessity that practically all of our information regarding the millennium will concern a Jewish or Israelitish age. 1945, Oswald Thompson Allis, “The Future of Israel and the Millennium”, in Prophecy and the Church: An Examination of the Claim of Dispensationalists that the Christian Church is a Mystery Parenthesis which Interrupts the Fulfilment to Israel of the Kingdom Prophecies of the Old Testament (Religion), Philadelphia: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 244:
2. (uncountable, usually) The style of art portraying a subject as literally and accurately as possible.
   • The two main forms of literalism are ergism and orthodoxy. 2015, Søren Kierkegaard, Bruce H. Kirmmse, K. Brian Söderquist, Kierkegaard's Journals and Notebooks, Volume 2: Journals EE-KK, →ISBN:

Forms

Deriveds

antiliteralism

Relateds

literalist · textualism · to the letter · metaphrase · letter of the law

Translations (6)

nl letterlijkheid (literal interpretation or understanding; adherence to the exact letter or precise significance, as in interpreting or translating) · ru буквали́зм (literal interpretation or understanding; adherence to the exact letter or precise significance, as in interpreting or translating) · pl dosłowność (literal interpretation or understanding; adherence to the exact letter or precise significance, as in interpreting or translating) · fi literalismi (literal interpretation or understanding; adherence to the exact letter or precise significance, as in interpreting or translating) · fi kirjaimellinen tulkinta (literal interpretation or understanding; adherence to the exact letter or precise significance, as in interpreting or translating) · fr littéralisme (literal interpretation or understanding; adherence to the exact letter or precise significance, as in interpreting or translating)