Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English - literal

~1 adj 1 the literal meaning of a word or expression is its basic or original meaning  (literal meaning/sense/interpretation etc)  (A trade war is not a war in the literal sense.)  (- compare figurative (1)) 2 literal translation a translation that gives a single word for each original word instead of giving the meaning of the whole sentence in a natural way 3 literal-minded not showing much imagination; prosaic - literalness n ~2 n BrE technical a printing mistake, especially in the spelling of a word; typo