literary

UK/ˈlɪt.(ə.)ɹə.ɹi/US/ˈlɪt.əˌɹɛɹ.i/

adjectiveB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,212 of 15,258mostly written

Literary means to do with written works of lasting worth. Literary criticism, a literary novel, literary merit.

In publishing it names a category as much as a quality, since literary fiction is a marketing category with its own shelves. Literary merit is a real legal test, since it has been used as a defence in obscenity trials.

Definitions of literary

1adjectiveliteraryTo do with written works of lasting worth.B2
“She won a literary prize for her first novel.”

literary is a quality.

Where it comes from

French litteraire comes from Latin litterarius, from littera, a letter.

French
littéraire
English, today
literary

From French littéraire.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

literary in the wild

A high-profile literary award in British culture, the Booker Prize is greeted with anticipation and fanfare around the world.
Booker Prize
Since the 1980s, his literary reputation has improved.
Jules Verne
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism.
Feminist literary criticism
The feminist wave model is useful to identify important surges in history, however, a lot of feminist literary work was still done in between waves.
Feminist literary criticism
Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory is a matter of some controversy.
Literary criticism

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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