different between letters vs literature

English

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?l?t?z/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?l?t?z/

Noun

letters

1. plural of letter

Noun

letters

1. Literature (school subject).

   Rickert was the first woman (and second individual) to be awarded a Ph.D. in English letters and philology with that academic honor at the University of Chicago.

2. The liberal arts, humanities, learning (broad accumulated cultural knowledge).

   Though architecture in ancient Rome was not generally considered to belong to the artes liberales, Vitruvius easily qualified as a man of letters because of his wide learning.

Derived terms

• man of letters

Verb

letters

1. Third-person singular simple present indicative form of letter

Anagrams

• Stelter, Stetler, lettres, settler, sterlet, tetrels, trestle

Afrikaans

Noun

letters

1. plural of letter

Dutch

Pronunciation

Noun

letters

1. Plural form of letter

Middle English

Noun

letters

1. Alternative form of lettres

Swedish

Noun

letters

1. indefinite genitive plural of lett

English

Wikiquote

Wikisource

Wikibooks

Alternative forms

• literatuer (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English literature, from Old French littérature, from Latin literatura or litteratura, from littera (“letter”), from Etruscan, from Ancient Greek ??????? (diphthér?, “tablet”). Displaced native Old English b?ccræft.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?l?.t?.??.t??(?)/, /?l?.t??.t??(?)/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?l?.t?.?.t??/, /?l?.t?.?.t??/, /?l?.t???.t??/, /?l?.t?.t??/
• (Midwestern US) IPA^(key): /?l?.t?.t??/

Noun

literature (usually uncountable, plural literatures)

1. The body of all written works.
2. The collected creative writing of a nation, people, group, or culture.
3. (usually preceded by the) All the papers, treatises, etc. published in academic journals on a particular subject.

   • The 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?? 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.
4. 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

Derived terms

Meronyms

• See also Thesaurus:literature

Related terms

• letter
• literal
• literacy
• literate
• literary

Translations

Further reading

• "literature" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 183.

Anagrams

• literateur, literatuer