Incorrect spelling, explanation: literal is a word with quite an easy spelling, but despite this fact, it’s commonly misspelled as litteral. There are two possible reasons for that. The first one is that the Latin origin of the word, which is littera, indeed featured a double -t letter. A more probable reason, however, is the second one – English has another similar and common word, which is litter, and many English users mistakenly associate the two words with each other. Nevertheless, the only possible spelling is literal.

Correct spelling, explanation: the word literal comes from Latin, but it didn’t enter English until the times of Middle English. Literal derives from the Latin forms litera and littera, which used to mean letter. Thus, the basic meaning of the word was letter by letter. In modern English literal functions as an adjective, but its original meaning hasn’t changed much.

Definition of literal:
1. adjective – the original or the most basic meaning of something,
It’s an idiomatic expression so you can’t understand it in a literal way.

Expressions with literal:
Some popular expressions in which literal appears include: literal translation (word by word), literal error (changing of a letter in a word by accident), and literal sense (basic sense).
The translation is too literal and that’s why it’s difficult to make any sense of it.
Literal errors in text messages are sometimes so funny that they appear in memes.
It’s a comedy show so you won’t enjoy it if you take it in a literal sense.