literature

The English word literature goes back to Latin litteratura. In Rome in the 1st century BCE, litteratura meant writing formed from letters and also the study of letters. It grew from littera, the ordinary Latin word for a letter of the alphabet. The root sense was concrete before it became cultural.

Latin litteratura moved into medieval learned writing and then into Old French as littérature. In Paris by the 12th century, the word could mean learning, bookish knowledge, and written culture. It still pointed as much to literacy and scholarship as to poems or novels. The modern literary sense had not yet fully narrowed.

English took over literature in the late 14th century. Early English uses often meant literary learning, grammar, or acquaintance with books. By the 18th century, writers in London were using literature for the body of written works themselves. The word had shifted from letters to the world built out of them.

That history explains why literature still carries two old ideas at once. It is writing, but it is also the learned tradition around writing. A novel, a play, and a shelf of criticism all fit under the same heading for that reason. The word remembers both the alphabet and the canon.