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• a  (used of the meanings of words or text) not literal; using figures of speech

• Mandelstam's reference to raspberries was in a very special, nonliteral, slang sense.
• More than any other play in American literature, Our Town opened the minds of the mainstream to nonliteral ways of telling a story.
• After the ABC affiliates passed on Saving Private Ryan--which uses the same expletive in the same nonliteral way--the commission said the film was not indecent because of its .

• figurative

• literal

Quotes

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• Ronald Numbers in Boston Globe (registration)
  The creationists have been very successful in persuading conservative Christians to abandon any nonliteral interpretation of the Bible,said Ronald Numbers, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and author of "The Creationists."
• Darl McBride in ZDNet UK
  ...indeed has plans to emphasise the copying of general structure more than specific lines of code, chief executive Darl McBride said in an interview in March: "The biggest area in the AutoZone case has to do with these nonliteral...