Word.ws English Dictionary

letteral

letteral adjective: referring to a type of musical notation used by Shakers, based on letters instead of notes. Also the obsolete form of literal.

Adjective

letteral (not comparable)

  1. (historical) Referring to a type of musical notation used by Shakers, based on letters instead of notes.
  2. (rare) Regarding letters of the alphabet.
    • [A certain effect is achieved] by a letter, by “old man R”, as the master agent is alone named[…]Thus, when Hitchcock repeats certain names and syllabic or even letteral patterns across his films, they appear to link up in active networks[…]Such repetitions isolate specific signifiers—individual...2001, Tom Cohen, “Political Thrillers: Hitchcock, de Man, and Secret Agency in the "Aesthetic State"”, in Material events: Paul de Man and the afterlife of theory, page 117

Noun

letteral (plural letterals)

  1. (Lojban) The name of a letter, such as gy. for the letter G.

Also used as

letteral is also the obsolete form of literal.

Forms of letteral

pluralletterals

Origin of letteral

From letter + -al. The Lojban sense was coined by James Cooke Brown by analogy with numeral.

Questions about letteral

What does letteral mean?
Letteral means referring to a type of musical notation used by Shakers, based on letters instead of notes.
What part of speech is letteral?
Letteral can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near letteral in the dictionary

  1. letter-spacing
  2. letter-stamp
  3. letter-stamps
  4. letter-writer
  5. letter-writers
  6. letteral
  7. letterals
  8. letterboard
  9. letterboards
  10. letterbomb
  11. letterbombs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: letteral (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “letteral.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/letteral. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.