DictionaryAI

literary

adjective
LIT-uh-rair-ee/ˈlɪtəɹɛ(ə)ɹi/UK · AUSLIT-uh-ruh-ree/ˈlɪtəɹəɹi/

5 meanings of literary

Practice

  1. 1
    adjective
    Connected with literature and the writing of books, poems, and plays.

    The museum houses an important literary archive of unpublished manuscripts.

    Her essay traces the literary movements that shaped postwar fiction.

    Note

    The broad, classifying sense, borrowed from French littéraire, usually placed before a noun to file it under the world of books: literary fame, a literary history, literary conversation. Samuel Johnson uses it in his Preface to the Plays of William Shakespeare (c. 1768), calling a century 'the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit.' Here the word sorts things into a category without praising them.

  2. 2
    adjective
    Suited to formal or artistic writing rather than to ordinary, everyday language.

    The translator kept a literary tone where the original sounded plain and conversational.

    Such an elaborate inversion feels too literary for a casual email.

    Similarformal, elevated, bookish

    Oppositecolloquial, informal, conversational

    Note

    Here the word judges rather than classifies, which is why it takes degree: too literary, rather literary, more literary than the original. Unlike the plain "of literature" meaning, it often follows the verb and carries a mild warning. A phrasing that is literary in this way may be elegant on the page but stiff in an email or in conversation.

  3. 3
    adjective
    Relating to authors, or to writing pursued as a profession.

    The two writers maintained a lively literary correspondence for years.

    She moved to the capital to break into its literary circles.

    Similarwriterly

    Note

    Here the word points at people and their trade rather than at texts. A literary man is someone who writes for a living or moves among those who do. William Mason's The Poems of Mr. Gray (1775) sets 'the literary' beside 'the fashionable world', treating them as two social circles. Unlike the plain "of literature" meaning, it describes a milieu of authors and their connections.

  4. 4
    adjective
    Having a wide knowledge of literature or of the craft of writing.

    A genuinely literary reviewer recognized the allusion at once.

    Their host turned out to be remarkably literary, quoting poets from memory.

    Similarwell-read, erudite, learned, lettered, cultured

    Oppositeunlettered, unread, uncultured

  5. 5
    adjective
    Fond of books and given to reading and study.

    She was a shy, literary child who spent every recess in the library.

    In an office full of sports fans, Dana was the literary one, always carrying a paperback in her bag.

    Similarbookish, studious, scholarly

Practice

Can you tell the meanings of literary apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.

Origin

This word comes from the French littéraire.