Literature
Pronunciation
- UK
- IPA: /ˈlɪt.(É™.)ɹ.ɪ.tʃjÊŠÉ™(ɹ)/, /ˈlɪt.ÉœË(ɹ).ɪ.tʃjÊŠÉ™(ɹ)/
- GenAm
- IPA: /ˈlɪ.tɚ.ɪ.tʃɚ/, /ˈlɪ.tɚ.ə.tʃɚ/
- Midwestern US English
- IPA: /ˈlɪ.tə.tʃɚ/
Alternative forms
- literatuer obsolete
Origin
From Latin literatura or litteratura.
Full definition of literature
Noun
literature
(usually uncountable; plural literatures)- The body of all written works.
- The collected creative writing of a nation, people, group, or culture.
- All the papers, treatises, etc. published in academic journals on a particular subject.
- 1988, Andrew Radford, Transformational grammar: a first course Chapter 7The obvious question to ask at this point is: ‘Why posit the existence of a set of Thematic Relations (THEME, AGENT, INSTRUMENT, etc.) distinct from constituent structure relations?ʼ The answer given in the relevant literature is that a variety of linguistic phenomena can be accounted for in a more principled way in terms of Thematic Functions than in terms of constituent structure relations.
- Written fiction of a high standard.However, even “literary†science fiction rarely qualifies as literature, because it treats characters as sets of traits rather than as fully realized human beings with unique life stories. —Adam Cadre, 2008