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of or relating to letters

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Latin

literalis

of or relating to letters or writing; in the exact words

c. 14th century
Philosophy

literal vs. figurative

The primary, non-metaphorical meaning of a word; what is said as opposed to what is meant

Enlightenment era
Programming

string literal

A fixed value in source code. It is what it is: "hello" means hello, 42 means 42, true means true.

1950s onward
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Display / Literata 700
Aa Bb Cc
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789
Body / Source Serif 4
Words have weight. Sentences cast shadows. Paragraphs behave like architectural materials, stacking and interlocking to build meaning from raw glyphs.
Code / JetBrains Mono
const literal = "exactly what it says";
typeof literal; // "string"
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String Literal
"literal.dev"

A sequence of characters. Nothing more, nothing less.

Numeric Literal
42

The answer, literally.

Boolean Literal
true

No ambiguity. No metaphor. Just truth.

Template Literal
`meaning is ${constructed}`

Even interpolation is explicit about its intentions.

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It means what it says.