Loosely typed language

A loosely typed language is a programming language that does not require a variable to be defined. For example, Perl is a loosely typed language, you can declare a variable, but it doesn't require you to classify the type of variable. In the example below, the first line declares the $test variable that can be used as an integer or string.

my $test;
$test = 1; #Test variable is now integer.
$test = "hello"; #Test variable is now a string.

The opposite of a loosely typed languages is a strongly typed language, such as the C programming language.

Perl, Programming terms