textual
adjective
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Before the invention of the printing press, books were produced by hand. When the text of a book is copied this way, textual errors can creep in, and a text that's been copied again and again can contain many such errors. By comparing different copies of a work, textual critics try to figure out where the copyists went wrong and restore the text to its original form so that modern readers can again enjoy the correct versions of ancient texts. When a class performs textual analysis of a poem, however, they are looking closely at its individual words and phrases in an effort to determine the poem's meanings.
Examples of textual in a Sentence
Mara Hoberman, Artforum, 1 Feb. 2025
In Lisa Brawley’s 1994 paper, the focus is on Usenet and similar fora, which are less about video performances than textual copies, yet the intimacy between poet and reader is still emerging as a corollary benefit for this new class of spoken word poets.
—David Silverberg, JSTOR Daily, 29 Jan. 2025
This is what researchers at Harvard, IESE Business School and McGill University found, from their textual analysis of all U.S. biomedical patents filed from 1976 through 2010.
—Corinne Post, Forbes, 21 Nov. 2024
IoT sensors provided real-time machine performance metrics, computer vision analyzed images for defects and textual logs pinpointed material inefficiencies.
—Dr. Chiranjiv Roy, Forbes, 16 Jan. 2025
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Dictionary Entries Near textual
Cite this Entry
“Textual.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/textual. Accessed 6 Feb. 2025.
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textual
adjective
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