Meaning of literary in English:

literary

Pronunciation /?l?t(?)r?ri/

See synonyms for literary

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adjective

1attributive Concerning the writing, study, or content of literature, especially of the kind valued for quality of form.
‘the great literary works of the nineteenth century’
- ‘The second broad topic of dissension concerns the modes of analysis in literary and cultural studies.’
- ‘These ideas have gained a lot of currency in the study of literary genres.’
- ‘Eventually, he found an agent after one of his short stories was published in a literary magazine.’
- ‘This is a loss for literary study and writers, as challenges by peers create and motivate new poems.’
- ‘This point can be made another way by considering Orwell's place in a growing field of literary studies.’
- ‘Having a piece selected for this anthology is perhaps the highest honour a literary magazine can receive.’
- ‘Their goal in writing a commentary with a distinct literary concern is refreshing.’
- ‘Some of them were published in a few magazines, including some literary journals.’
- ‘Although it is a form of literary study, it is not a form of literary scholarship.’
- ‘There is an acknowledged double standard in how we view a prolific genre writer and a fruitful literary author.’
- ‘By contrast, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy and other writers in Russia's great literary tradition fully understood this responsibility.’
- ‘It could be interpreted as literary criticism - and it is certainly causing a stink.’
- ‘Is the on-line talk abstract emerging as a new literary genre?’
- ‘The novel also proves that literary fiction doesn't have to be elegiac in tone to be successful.’
- ‘For some years I had been publishing poems in small literary magazines.’
- ‘Recipients range from preeminent national museums to small literary magazines that could not survive without subsidies.’
- ‘I do not object to this accolade on the grounds that Edinburgh has little literary tradition.’
- ‘None of this interested Forster or, for that matter, most literary scholars of the past 25 years.’
- ‘Train tracks and trains themselves have long signified both real and metaphorical journeys in African American literary and vernacular culture.’
- ‘But the film medium has always had difficulty in translating effects that are quintessentially literary.’
written
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1. 1.1Concerned with literature as a profession.
  ‘the newspaper's literary editor’
  ‘The support of leading literary figures, Burns scholars and leading entertainers lent weight to the cause.’
  ‘Considered to be an immense literary figure, he earned his place in history with a simple tearjerker.’
  ‘But then it was read by the literary editor of the Washington Post, who was amazed by what he saw.’
  ‘Privately, many figures in the literary world were also foaming at the mouth.’
  ‘He adds that he recently had dinner with a literary editor and a book reviewer and they both felt the same way.’
  ‘I just got around to looking her up, and she seems to have been quite a figure in literary circles.’
  ‘She was arts editor, theatre critic and subsequently literary editor for The Spectator during the Sixties.’
  ‘In the second half of the 19th century, a group of literary figures became identified as Symbolists.’
  ‘However, his knowledge of the broader literary picture takes second place to his late friend's reputation.’
  ‘So many of us in the literary and academic worlds who knew him only casually still felt as if he was a friend and colleague.’
  ‘Sometimes a creative writer may be forced by circumstances into the position of literary academic.’
  ‘Writers and literary academics have never been closer, and never further apart.’
  ‘You must have cut some kind of figure in Oxford, among the more literary undergraduates anyway.’
  ‘She is described by her sister as the artistic, dramatic, literary one in the family.’
  ‘By this time he was already writing and forming literary and artistic friendships.’
  ‘Your literary agent is the book-marketing expert who can sell your crafted words to jaded publishing professionals.’
  ‘This suspicion of being enemy agents was, so far as literary men were concerned, no novelty.’
  ‘He felt that the genius of literary artists was documented in their openness to the unusual.’
  ‘The literary artist in a similar manner makes use of words and sounds to convey his impression of life.’
  ‘Ballard first entered the literary world as a science fiction writer, a genre he soon exhausted and has not explored in years.’
  scholarly, learned, intellectual, cultured, erudite, bookish, highbrow, studious, cerebral, lettered, academic, cultivated, civilized
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2(of language) associated with literary works or other formal writing; having a marked style intended to create a particular emotional effect.
‘the script was too literary’
- ‘Yes, I do feel if Urdu has to survive as a literary language it has to increase its vocabulary.’
- ‘This endeavor focused on folklore and history and began to unify the Ukrainian literary language.’
- ‘His language is very accessible as it is closer to the speaking rather than the literary language.’
- ‘Where among modern writers can you find their superiors in clearness and vigour of literary style?’
- ‘The literary utterance too creates the state of affairs to which it refers, in several respects.’
- ‘For the love of all that is literary, please stop writing.’
- ‘Apart from their literary qualities, his publications were famed for a high standard of typography and binding.’
- ‘Alas, the story is not only unverified but has a suspiciously literary quality about it.’
- ‘It is of high literary quality, showing the master's great skill at phrasing subtle ideas and word-play.’
- ‘We may admire most of the literary qualities and disapprove of only a few in the course of the novel.’
- ‘The contents and literary character of the Koran defy brief categorization.’
- ‘Studies of Australian war reporting have been fragmentary and of varied literary quality.’
- ‘It was only much later that the Authorized Version came to be praised for its literary qualities.’
- ‘But few of them would make claims for the literary value of those texts.’
- ‘Our long list, short list and eventual choice of winner reflected our estimate of literary quality and nothing else.’
- ‘He is chiefly concerned with literary fiction, but the same danger exists in every other genre.’
- ‘The effectiveness of a cabaret song depends only partly on the literary quality of its text.’
- ‘You cannot help notice the remarkable literary, almost lyrical, quality about the work.’
- ‘Books of educative and literary value are kept in libraries for prisoners having an academic bent of mind.’
- ‘The prize is popularly seen as an award for a new novelists of adult literary fiction, but this is not the case.’
formal, written
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