Definitions for literature
ˈlɪt ər ə tʃər, -ˌtʃʊər, ˈlɪ trə-lit·er·a·ture

Princeton's WordNet(4.64 / 19 votes)Rate this definition:

1. literature(noun)

   creative writing of recognized artistic value

2. literature, lit(noun)

   the humanistic study of a body of literature

   "he took a course in Russian lit"

3. literature(noun)

   published writings in a particular style on a particular subject

   "the technical literature"; "one aspect of Waterloo has not yet been treated in the literature"

4. literature(noun)

   the profession or art of a writer

   "her place in literature is secure"

Wiktionary(3.34 / 9 votes)Rate this definition:

1. literature(Noun)

   The body of all written works.

   Etymology: From literatura or litteratura.

2. literature(Noun)

   The collected creative writing of a nation, people, group or culture.

   Etymology: From literatura or litteratura.

3. literature(Noun)

   All the papers, treatises etc. published in academic journals on a particular subject.

   Etymology: From literatura or litteratura.

4. literature(Noun)

   Written fiction of a high standard.

   SF is rarely literature because the characters are so poorly realised. - Adam Cadre

   Etymology: From literatura or litteratura.

Webster Dictionary(3.75 / 8 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Literature(noun)

   learning; acquaintance with letters or books

2. Literature(noun)

   the collective body of literary productions, embracing the entire results of knowledge and fancy preserved in writing; also, the whole body of literary productions or writings upon a given subject, or in reference to a particular science or branch of knowledge, or of a given country or period; as, the literature of Biblical criticism; the literature of chemistry

3. Literature(noun)

   the class of writings distinguished for beauty of style or expression, as poetry, essays, or history, in distinction from scientific treatises and works which contain positive knowledge; belles-lettres

4. Literature(noun)

   the occupation, profession, or business of doing literary work

Freebase(3.54 / 17 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Literature

   Literature is the art of written work and can, in some circumstances, refer exclusively to published sources. The word literature literally means "things made from letters" and the pars pro toto term "letters" is sometimes used to signify "literature," as in the figures of speech "arts and letters" and "man of letters." Literature is commonly classified as having two major forms—fiction & non-fiction—and two major techniques—poetry and prose. Literature may consist of texts based on factual information, as well as on original imagination, such as polemical works as well as autobiography, and reflective essays as well as belles-lettres. Literature can be classified according to historical periods, genres, and political influences. The concept of genre, which earlier was limited, has broadened over the centuries. A genre consists of artistic works which fall within a certain central theme, and examples of genre include romance, mystery, crime, fantasy, erotica, and adventure, among others. Important historical periods in English literature include Old English, Middle English, the Renaissance, the 17th Century Shakespearean and Elizabethan times, the 18th Century Restoration, 19th Century Victorian, and 20th Century Modernism. Important intellectual movements that have influenced the study of literature include feminism, post-colonialism, psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, post-modernism, romanticism, and Marxism.

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary(4.50 / 4 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Literature

   lit′ėr-a-tūr, n. the science of letters or what is written: the whole body of literary compositions in any language, or on a given subject: all literary productions except those relating to positive science and art, usually confined, however, to the belles-lettres.—adj. Lit′eratured (Shak.), learned, having literary knowledge.—Light literature, books which can be read and understood without mental exertion: fiction; Polite literature, belles-lettres. [Fr.,—L. literatura—litera, a letter.]

The Nuttall Encyclopedia(3.67 / 6 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Literature

   defined by Carlyle "as an 'apocalypse of nature,' a revealing of the 'open secret,' a 'continuous revelation' of the God-like in the terrestrial and common, which ever endures there, and is brought out now in this dialect, now in that, with various degrees of clearness ... there being touches of it (i. e. the God-like) in the dark stormful indignation of a Byron, nay, in the withered mockery of a French sceptic, his mockery of the false, a love and worship of the true ... how much more in the sphere harmony of a Shakespeare, the cathedral music of a Milton; something of it too in those humble, genuine, lark-notes of a Burns, skylark starting from the humble furrow far overhead into the blue depths, and singing to us so genuinely there."

The Roycroft Dictionary(2.40 / 5 votes)Rate this definition:

1. literature

   The art of saying a thing by saying something else just as good.

U.S. National Library of Medicine(3.40 / 5 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Literature

   Writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest. The body of written works produced in a particular language, country, or age. (Webster, 3d ed)

British National Corpus

1. Spoken Corpus Frequency

   Rank popularity for the word 'literature' in Spoken Corpus Frequency: #1951

2. Written Corpus Frequency

   Rank popularity for the word 'literature' in Written Corpus Frequency: #4389

3. Nouns Frequency

   Rank popularity for the word 'literature' in Nouns Frequency: #886

Anagrams for literature »

1. literatuer

2. literateur

How to pronounce literature?

1. 

   Alex

   US English

   

   Daniel

   British

   

   Karen

   Australian

   

   Veena

   Indian

How to say literature in sign language?

Numerology

1. Chaldean Numerology

   The numerical value of literature in Chaldean Numerology is: 6

2. Pythagorean Numerology

   The numerical value of literature in Pythagorean Numerology is: 3

Examples of literature in a Sentence

1. Daniel Cameron:

   We understand that we’re trying to cut back on antibiotic use, but if you have a child that’s sick, and with so many complexities of infection in a tick and plenty of published literature that supports how complicated this disease is, you’d like to have the freedom as a doctor to treat your patients and not be limited, if doctors who treat Lyme had more freedom, we wouldn’t have so much frustration in the medical community.

2. Matthew Arnold:

   Journalism is literature in a hurry.

3. Reza Sanaye:

   Basics of Macro-systems' Behavior Prediction 1 .The Macro-systems with their sometimes stochastic behavior may be (good) indicators of the dispersal of information from a holistic standpoint as well as [to be discussed later on] from a regionally molecular anisotropic zone. 2. The data scattering as for systems with quasi-vector behavior on liquids, on gases, and amongst solids, when observed from an epi-phenomenological perspective versus a phenomenological one, can show that a number of classical views on mechanistic behavior of Macro-systems may be substituted with some “machinic” view.¬ 3. The abandonment of the purely mechanistic view of interfacial forces and the adoption of thermodynamic and probabilistic concepts such as free energy and entropy have been two of the most important steps towards getting out of the worn-out mechanistic notions into more abstract conceptualization of information dispersal, working instead of causality. 4. Comparison also has to be made between hermeneutics of the notion of entropic forces within and without the framework of established thermodynamics. The very word “force” is itself a bit too collocated with entropy already. What we are after is to make it next of kin to ideas of data, information, topology of data, and mereology of stochasticity. 5. The physico-chemical potentiality inside a variety of equilibrium states can be used as a platform for anisotropic configurations whereby not only the entropy of confinement, but also the entropy of dispersal find their true meaning. 6. Within contexts of classical accumulation and energy-growth models, the verifiability of any anisotropic reversal is also demonstrable, if not by means of a set of axioms, at least by multiplicities of interfacial behavior in which experimental data find their mereotopological ratios one in the neighborhood of the other (considering first, for the sake of simplicity, our state spaces to be of metric nature). 7. Thus, there remains the reciprocity of interfacial tensions calculations where surface tension gives rise to internal polarization of those data systems by which we should like to derive either axiomatic or multiple manifoldic regionalization of PREDICTION. 8. This, with a number of Chaotic and Strange-Attractors modifications, can potentially be applied even to the whole matrix of the Universe. 9. Most of the literature on systems (information) entropy regard mesoscopic level as THE one with highest aptitude for (physicalistic) data analysis. However, there are clues to indicate that some of the main streams of structuration and dynamics are EITHER in common amongst microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic systems OR holistic patterns of the said structurations and dynamics can be derived one from the other two. For example, we shall show later—in the course of the unfolding of present notions—that density functional theory (DFT) which has become the physicists’ methodology for describing solids’ electronic structure, can also be extended to other methods or systems. Few-atom systems can implicate the already explicated order of, say, biomolecules if rigorous analyses are carried out over the transition phases (translational data mappings). 10. The level of likelihood of information dispersal in any nano- and pico-systems with/without (full) attachment to and/or dependence upon chemical energy exchange, relates to dynamics of differentials of those multiplicities of tubing interconnector manifolds which potentially have the capacity to harness thermal energy. This spells that consumption of chemical energy does not necessarily always act against the infusion of energy. Here, delineation has to be made over the minutiae of the differences between Micro- and Macro-systems. Any movement of lines of demarcation throughout the said systems over the issue of (non-)interdependency of data mereotopology on chemical energy exchange, may be predicted if classical nucleation and growth theories give their place to an even more rigorous science of Differences. Repetition of (observation) of such Differences makes it possible to see through some of the most “macro” levels of systematicity [we have already run some simulations of micro-spaces’ state mappings for purposes of clarifying how many of the plasma macro jet streams inside stars or in the inter-galaxial space move. Even magneticity has turned out, with all due caution, to be comparable]. The above-said Differences actually refer to potentialities within lines of thermodynamic exchanges based upon anisotropy of information. Such exchanges nominate themselves as MO exchanges when “micro” but as some the most specific gravito-convectional currents in usages for astrology, earth science, and ecology. Thence, the science will be brought out of prognosing the detailed balance of mesoscopic (ir-)reversibility in terms of data neighborhoods connectivity. On any differentiable manifold with its own ring of universal differentiable functions, we may determine to have the “installing” of modules of Kähler spaces where demarcation could be represented by: d(a+b)=da+db, d(ab)=adb+bda, and: dλ=0(a,b∈A,λ∈k)d(a+b)=da+db,d(ab)=adb+bda,dλ=0(a,b∈A,λ∈k) Where any one module has the formalism: dbdb (b∈Ab∈A). All these having been said, again we have the problematics of still remaining within the realm of classic calculus. It is likely that for Macrosystems we may decide not to apply the classical version.

4. Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa:

   Not only is it the first time in a long time that we present a long movie, it is also a film adaptation to one of the main works of our literature and our contemporary writers.

5. Northrop Frye:

   A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

Images & Illustrations of literature

Popularity rank by frequency of use