What is the meaning of "literal" in the phrase object literal notation?

About "complimenting JSON": He specified it.

The "literal" part: Googling "object literal" provides two top resources: MDN and Wikipedia. To quote the latter:

In computer science, a literal is a notation for representing a fixed value in source code. Almost all programming languages have notations for atomic values such as integers, floating-point numbers, and strings, and usually for booleans and characters; some also have notations for elements of enumerated types and compound values such as arrays, records, and objects.

Basically, all syntax constructs whose use lead to a defined type can be called a literal. (E.g., a string literal, "abc".) It's a technical term that denotes, that "literally" writing something in this or that way leads to a certainly typed variable exclusively (in contrast to constructs, that look like something else, like array() in PHP).

Well, in programming in general a literal is a fixed value. Like saying var five = 5; and using "five" in some math, just use the number 5 literally.

So in an OOP language an object literal would be something like:

var new_dog = {
    name: "doggy",
    good_dog: false
};

The entire thing is my object. Things between my {} are my literals. My notation is a pattern "name:value".