Literal and figurative language is a distinction within some fields of language analysis, for example, rhetoric and semantics. Literal language involves words that conform exactly to their precise definitions. Figurative (or non-literal) language involves words that deviate from their precise definitions in order to achieve a new, altered, or more complicated understanding: for example, through overstatement, understatement, comparison, multiple meanings, or some common linguistic or cultural reference. A literal usage is the “normal” meanings of the words. It maintains a consistent meaning regardless of the context, with “the intended meaning corresponding exactly to the meaning” of the individual words. Figurative use of language is the use of words or phrases that “implies a non-literal meaning which does make sense or that could [also] be true”. Aristotle and later the Roman Quintilian were among the early analysts of rhetoric who expounded on the differences between literal and figurative language. In 1769, Frances Brooke’s novel The History of Emily Montague was used in the earliest Oxford English Dictionary citation for the figurative sense of “literally”; the sentence from the novel used was, “He is a fortunate man to be introduced to such a party of fine women at his arrival; it is literally to feed among the lilies.” This citation was also used in the OED’s 2011 revision. Within literary analysis, such terms are still used; but within the fields of cognition and linguistics, the basis for identifying such a distinction is no longer used.