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the disgrace or reproach incurred by conduct considered outrageously shameful. see Frankenstein |
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cleverly skillful, resourceful or ingenious. |
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hard to understand, recondite |
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the act, fact or process of diminishing, lessening, reduction |
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unwilling or relectant. also loath. "I am loath to go on such short notice." |
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extraordinary in size or degree, marvelous, monstrous/abnormal |
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a gathering or secret meeting, the body of cardinals. A conclave of political leaders. |
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petty quarrel, ill humor. to offend |
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to drink copiously and heartily. |
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a sudden disturbance or commotion |
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pressed together or compacted |
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auxiliary, assisting or subordinate |
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a festival or celebration |
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a funeral rite. "And to the ladies he restored again the bones belonging to their husbands slain, to do, as custom was, their obsequies." |
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in existence; used especially to refer to the last surviving examples of something passing out of existence, such as an antique book or a nearly extinct species |
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to make open or plain by saying |
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a freeman or citizen of an English borough. "Each seemed a worthy burgess, fit to grace a guild-hall with a seat upon the dais" Chaucer |
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the state of being behind or late, esp. in the fulfillment of a duty, payment, promise, obligation, or the like. "The accounts, right from his master's earliest years, no one had ever caught him arrears." |
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to remove, take off or get rid of. "Doff your silly ideas and come to your senses." |
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to strive in competition or rivalry with one another. "Swimmers from many nations were vying for the title" |
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a thicket of small trees or bushes. also copse. |
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an old musical instrument related to the guitar, having a flat, pear-shaped soundbox and wire strings. |
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a representation or image. (in effigy) in public view "a leader hanged in effigy by the mob" |
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painfully difficult or burdensome work. pain, anguish or suffering from mental or phsyical hardship.10 |
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hooked, like an eagle's beak/of an eagle. of the nose. |
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excessive elation or pride over one's own achievements. |
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a complete and magnificent array. a complete suit or armor. |
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a farmer who cultivates his own land. |
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to utter long wailing cries, howl or screech. |
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very, very black. a weasle-like animal. |
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a dryad who is in the spirit of a particular tree. |
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a rude or surly person. a peasant or rustic. |
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the husband of an unfaithful wife. to make a cuckold of someone |
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an eccentric man, esp one who is old. |
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hide of a young or small beast |
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vulgar term for woman's genitals |
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a musical embellishment consisting of a rapid succession of tones sung to a single syllable. 2. a slice of meat rolled around a filling of minced meat and cooked |
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an illicit lover, esp of a married person. any lover. |
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to jest or mock. a joke or quip |
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harshness or sharpness of tone, temper or manner. |
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food supplies, provisions |
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pure, complete, unqualified. not in mixture with other metals. mi"unalloyed relief" |
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to renounce or repudiate. "After his resignation as prime minister, he abjured all titles, preferring to remain just plain 'Mr." |
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a scolding, vicious woman. a hag. |
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to help or relieve aid or assistance |
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illicit intercourse, the practice of procuring women for the gratification of lust. |
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to slander, to make false and malicious statements about. |
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a weak-minded or foolish old person. |
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flirtation, dawdling, a trifling away of time. |
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to smooth over, gloss over, flatter, extenuate |
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grey or white with age, venerable |
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to talk excessively and pointlessly, babble |
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wanton, lewd, inclined to lustfulness |
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a self-seeking servile flatterer, fawning parasite |
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to pamper, spoil or coddle |
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excessively particular, critical or demanding, hard to please. a fastidious eater. |
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the act of cutting the hair or shaving the head. |
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monetary reward or gain, money |
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exceptionally refined and fastidious in taste or manner. |
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brief, forceful and meaningful in expression. a pithy observation |
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a man who is excessively vain and concerned about his appearance, dress and manners. |
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having a pleasant odor; reminiscent. "verse redolent of Shakespeare" |
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a wretched coward, cravern. |
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mendicant (n) mendicant (a) |
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a person who possessess great power, as a sovereign, monarch or ruler. |
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to proclaim, declare, affirm, assert; to imply "his retraction predicates a change of attitude." to derive "he predicated his behavior on his faith in humanity. |
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to impose penance (sinner), to grant absolution (penitant), to hear the confession |
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to raise irritating and trivial objections, to find fault with unnecessarily. "He finds something to cavil at in everything I say." |
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the act of appointing a person to represent/act for another. |
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clothing, apparel, attire |
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proximity; kinship; similarity; nearness in time. "Here I disclaim all my paternal care, propinquity and property of blood" (King Lear) |
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pleasing to the eye but deceptive, superficially pleasing/plausible, apparently good/right but lacking real merit. specious arguments |
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a feudal overlord, a sovereign/state exercising power over a dependent state. |
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undisturbed, untouched, unbroken; free from violation or desecration |
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to pass from one to another, back or forth, exchange, trade. to bandy blows, to bandy words. |
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a slogan/catchword; a peculiarity of pronunciation/behavior/mode of dress etc. that distinguishes a particular class or set of persons. |
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the practice of holding persons in servitude or partial slavery as to work off a debt or to serve a penal sentence. |
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the violent seizure and carrying off of another's property, plunder. "Behind the mists of ruin and rapine waved the calico dresses of the women..." W.E.B. DuBois |
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spotted or mottled. a plain woven cloth with a figurative pattern on one side. |
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powerful, mighty, potent. "His grief grew puissant and the strings of life began to crack" (King Lear) |
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"in well-nigh the whole rural South the black farmers are peons, bound by law and custom to an economic slavery" (DuBois) |
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to speak falsely or misleadingly, to lie. prevarication |
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to scatter or disperse; to indulge in extravagant, intemperate, or dissolute pleasure |
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surroundings, esp. of a social or cultural nature. a snobbish milieu |
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willing to do what is asked, obedient, tractable, docile; acquired by bidding. "Conchubar is coming-to-day to put an oath upon him that will stop his rambing and make him as biddable as a house-dog" (William Yeats) |
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one of a race of pirates or sea demons who raided and pillaged Ireland but were finally defeated; sometimes associated with hostile forces of nature. |
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the craft or the techniques of dramatic composition. "He then wrote a trunkful of plays, studied dramaturgy with George Pierce Baker at Harvard and saw his first play produced in 1916" (re: Eugene O'Neill) |
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a unit of length measuring from the elbow to the extremity of the middle finger. "for the spectator almost feels that Ibsen is trying to add a cubit to the stature of his heoine by standing her on the ruin of her son." (re: Henrik Ibsen Ghosts) |
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"I have used the words fuck and cunt freely in this piece, because Lawrence wanted to rescue them from the lexicon of dirty words" |
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"In 1960 there was a court case about this novel, a noisy affair, a landmark in the story of English literature, since there was an attempt to have the unexpurgated version banned" |
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"What has to strike us now was the angry polemics of the piece" |
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"He had never been the modern ladylike young gentleman: rather bucolic, even, with his ruddy face and broad shoulders" |
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"In this case, as in all cases, the adults knew better. And Monika remained intransigent and firm" (Danielle Steele, Echoes) |
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"He was wearing white slacks and a dark blue blazer, a navy tie and a very good-looking straw hat that made him look somewhat rakish" |
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"his cousin put her valises in the trunk of the car" |
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"Although Beata's family had shown no sign that they would welcome them, it was always possible that if they lived nearby, they might relent eventually. And perhaps in time, some raprochement could be encouraged." (DS) |
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"She wanted to become Sister Teresa of Carmel. Until then, in her lowly state as postulant, she would be Sister Amadea" (DS) |
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"She joined he other sisters for the litany of the Blessed Virgin" |
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"The order was discalced, which meant that they did not wear proper shoes, as part of the discomforts which they embraced" (DS) |
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"While Eros, all earth's suzerain, we worship ot--" (Euripedes, Hippolytus) |
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"As though, base wretch, hast come to me to trafic/ With the inviolate bed of my own father." (Hippolytus) |
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"Hellas heaps high her slaughtered kine" (Euripedes) |
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"And we in consternation, / Wondering from whence it came, looed towards the breakers" (Eu) |
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speedy. "Advise the Duke where you are going, to a most festinate preparation" |
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withered; "Bind fast his corky arms" |
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"To be worst,/ The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,/ Stands stil in esperance" (Shakespeare, King Lear) |
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"to Heaven towered a wave prodigious, So high it masked from sight the Rocks of Sciron" (Eu) |
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"Such words of shame! I have subdued my soul/ to bear my love; but with your specious tempting I shall be sunk in the very sin of hate." (Eu) |
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extremely irritable or easily angered. "in the same way the poet, in imitating people whose character is choleric or phlegmatic , and so forth, must keep them as they are and at the same time make them more attractive" (Aristotle) |
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not easily excited or display emotion, sluggish; calm, composed. "In phlegmatic natures, calamity is unaffecting, in shallow natures it is rehtorical." (Emerson) |
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the production of immunity against poison by taking the poison in gradually increased doses. see Princess Bride's Wesley and Ninja Scrolls. "There are people who have an appetite for grie, plaesure is not strong enough and they crave pain, mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity can soothe their ragged and dishevelled desolation." (Emerson) |
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a slight infusion, as of some element or quality; a trace or smack (a tincture of irony); a tincture of education had softened his rude manners. "The few critics who have had some tincture of philosophy have remarked this singular phenomenon." (David Hume, Of Tragedy) |
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"L'Abbe Dubos, in his Reflections on Poetry and Painting [1719], asserts, that nothing is in general so disagreeabble to the mind as the languid, listless state of indolence into which it falls upon the removal of all passion and occupation." (David Hume, Of Tragedy) |
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"it is still better than that insipid lanquor which arises from perect tranquillity and repose." |
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sweet sinning. "Jealousy and absence in love compose the dolce peccante of the Italians, which they suppose so essential to al pleasure." (David Hume, Of Tragedy) |
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A natural outsider, I had found my proper fulcrum, and was ready to shift the world" |
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the science of studying poetic meters and versification. "Making up for the absence of that fixed-quantity metrical schema calls for every known trick at the English prosodist's disposal" |
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the special vocabulary and idiom of a particular profession or social group. "Equally modernist, and another thing Rudd, quite rightly, complained about was the slangy urban argot with which I'd laced a fiar amount of Juvenal's rhetoric." |
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estimation for a value between two known data points or outside of data. "Willis is an enthusiastic interpolationist: hist text is dotted with shorter or longer italicized passages that he regards as spurious." |
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"Marcus Aurelius would scarcely have relished Juvenal's xenophobic attitude to all things Greek" |
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verbal abuse or castigation, violent denunciation or condemnation. "It is from here on that on begins to detect a subtle change of tone, from savage vituperation to a more tempered and reflective irony." |
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circumlocutory, roundabout. "and his periphrastic mythological allusions become less mocking, more turgidly Alexandrian" |
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swollen, distended, turmid; inflated, overblown or pompous. "and his periphrastic mythological allusions become less mocking, more turgidly Alexandrian" |
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a satire or lampoon, esp. in a publice place. "in middle age Juvenal uttered a short pasquinade of a few verses satirizing Paris the pantomimus." |
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a person belonging to or characteristic of the lowest social group in a city, a street urchin. "Penniless, his position and career in ruins, seared by exile and the Terror, Juvenal came back, turned forty, to a Rome of jumped-up guttersnipes and decadent aristocrats." |
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"Any crypto-Republicanism one can detect in his work is no more than a reflection of the fasionable Stoic shibboleths current throughout his lifetime" |
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a platitude or trite saying. "a bagful of moral bromides and stock rhetorical tropes or literary allusions to suit every occasion" |
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any literary device that consists in the use of words other than their literal sense, such as metaphor, synechdoche and irony. |
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something or someone that is not in its correct historical or chronological time. ex. the sword is an anachronism in modern warfare. "The first modern novel is Don Quixote de La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, yet its modernity is founded on the apparant anachronism of its very subject matter, since this is the story of a slightly addled provincial gentleman who reads medieval romances of chivalry..." |
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of doubtful authorship or authenticity. "Don Quixote has come all the way from La Mancha to Barcelona in order to denounce the apocryphal version o his adventures published by one Avellaneda to cash in on the popularity of Cervantes' book." |
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heavy, massive. "the majority of these are topical and are the subject of long notes in the more ponderous editions of the book." |
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a person who makes an excessive or inappropriate display of learning; one who overemphasizes rules or minor details, adhering rigidly to book knowledge without regard to common sense. "who, I have heard it rumoured, were famous poets: and even if they were not, and some pedants and graduates turned up to snap and growl at you behind your back in the name of truth, you need not bother about them a bit; for even if they convict you of falsehood, they cannot cut off the hand you wrote it with." |
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appurtenance (n) appurtenances (n.pl) |
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accessory, something subordinate to another more important thing; instruments, apparatus. "as soon as he saw the inn he convinced himself that it was a fortress with its four towers and pinnacles of shining silver, complete with a drawbridge, a deep moat and all those appurtenances with which such castles are painted." |
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flock of geese/ducks in flight; a length of yarn/wool wound on a reel, suggestive of the twistings of a skein. ex. a skein of hair, an incoherent skein of words. "For the skein can be judged by the thread, and we shall rest assured and satisfied with this, and your worship will be pleased and content" (Cervantes) |
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"you must desire for me some of those violent and dangerous diseases from the cure of which so much honor redounds to the physician" |
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"To give you pleasure, my sweet Renee, I promise to show all the lenity in my power" |
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"for what great and mysterious purpose has it pleased hHeaven to abase the man once so elevated, and raise up the individual so beaten down and depressed?" (Abbe Faria, Dumas) |
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"How inscrutable are the ways of Providence!" |
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"these are the changes and vicissitudes that give liberty to a nation. Mark what I say!" |
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