dictionaries - Is this the right definition of literal?


I just asked whether dictionaries (specifically the OED) might, for one lemma, state several different definitions which are literal. And there seems to be some confusion about my use of 'literal' there, that e.g. 'speak' only ever literally means to make speech with the mouth. Perhaps because that its most conversational sense, or perhaps because it is the main definition or sense, I'm not sure.


So does literal use mean only use the root meaning of a word?


I thought that a "figure of speech" is something which departs from accepted usage of its terms, but is it in fact departing from primary use?



Answer



So you have e.g. here



In order to distinguish literalism from overspecification, I will understand literalism as committed to the further hypothesis that the alleged non- literal meanings are not obtained by a process of selection (in other words, the rest of the meanings are strictly derivations from the literal meaning).



And also here



Literal language uses words exactly according to their conventionally accepted meanings or denotation.



So it's up for debate what the term 'literal' means. Whether or not that is satisfactory given the potential for infinite confusion!


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