LETTERS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does letters mean? 

• LETTERS (noun)
  The noun LETTERS has 2 senses:

1. the literary culture

2. scholarly attainment

  Familiarity information: LETTERS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LETTERS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The literary culture

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Context example:

this book shows American letters at its best

Hypernyms ("letters" is a kind of...):

culture (the tastes in art and manners that are favored by a social group)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Scholarly attainment

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Context example:

he is a man of letters

Hypernyms ("letters" is a kind of...):

encyclopaedism; encyclopedism; eruditeness; erudition; learnedness; learning; scholarship (profound scholarly knowledge)

 Context examples 

My dearest Catherine, I received your two kind letters with the greatest delight, and have a thousand apologies to make for not answering them sooner.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Instead of recreating sounds based on individual letters or words, the goal of this project was to synthesize the specific sounds used in natural speech.

(Scientists translate brain signals into speech sounds, National Institutes of Health)

I only hoped to find, and find I have, all that there was—only some letters and a few memoranda, and a diary new begun.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

In one study, on average, about 3.68% of letters used in English tend to be "a"s, while the number is 6.22% in Spanish and 3.95% in French.

(A, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

On the second page were the printed letters “C.P.R.,” and then came several sheets of numbers.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

These are represented by the letters A, C, G and T. Sometimes, changes occur in the ‘spelling’ of our DNA – an A becomes a G, for example.

(‘Fingerprint database’ could help scientists to identify new cancer culprits, University of Cambridge)

My dear Anne,—I make no apology for my silence, because I know how little people think of letters in such a place as Bath.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

So Teresa Silva, aged nine, opened his letters and read them to him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

She took the letters as he gave them.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Information is stored in DNA in a code made by arranging the four bases (identified by the letters A, C, G, and T) in different orders.

(DNA sequencing, NCI Dictionary)