New answers tagged meaning
2
In this context, "the new man" is a new "fence" that Jakobs had not dealt with before. Fence is a noun with several meanings, including the following:
Someone who hides or buys and sells stolen goods, a criminal middleman for transactions of stolen goods.
Since "fence" can also be a verb ("engage in the selling or buying ...
3
"the partner who declares on a weak red suit and hopes for the best" is certainly a reference to the card game Bridge, specifically the early form called Bridge Whist.
The game is played by two pairs of players, known as partnerships; this structure makes any player very dependent on their partner's ability, particularly in the opening stage where ...
2
Shakespeare's plays preceded Ben Jonson's song. And Shakespeare uses drink to with this meaning:
I drink to the general joy o' the whole table. (Macbeth)
With drinking healths to my niece: I'll drink to her as long as there is a passage in my throat and drink in Illyria: he's a coward and a coystrill that will not drink to my niece till his brains turn o' ...
3
Interior oppression here refers to the suffering caused by the fear of losing God, typically because of one's sins. For a similar usage of "oppression", see Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle, where one can read the following (emphasis added):
For her understanding is so dim that it is incapable of seeing the truth, but believes what the ...
1
Colonel Black is interested in something much more valuable to him than stamps and small coins, namely a very specific letter. This letter wouldn't have a stamp on it, "for the silent man on the floor had come with his resignation in his pocket".
Jakobs knows nothing about the letter, so from his point of view, Colonel Black is not looking for a ...
1
A man of character is someone who has a strong character, i.e. someone who has positive personality traits such as honesty, dependability, perseverance, loyalty, etc. Calling someone a man of some character suggests that the person has those traits, but only to a degree.
That the man has something behind him means that there is something unfortunate in his ...
3
According to the online supermarket Lazada, Ginebra San Miguel, introduced in 1834, "is the first gin in the Philippines and likewise recognized as the no. 1 selling gin in the world."
It became known as cuatro cantos because the bottle in which it was originally sold had four corners: cuatro cantos. (Canto can indeed also mean 'song'.)
According ...
3
Richard has three older brothers: Edward (king Edward IV); Edmund, Earl of Rutland; and George, Duke of Clarence. If Richard wants to mount the throne, he needs to get rid of his brothers and of his oldest brothers two sons (Edward V and Richard, Duke of York).
This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,
About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’
Of Edward’s ...
2
It becomes clear a few lines later when Richard is talking to Clarence. Clarence is actually George, the Duke of Clarence. It's all part of Richard's plot to remove Clarence by spreading terrible rumors to set King Edward against him. (Edward is Richard's older brother, incidentally, not his father.)
The prophecy actually comes true later, though--Richard ...
1
In order of the highlighted portions:
It is the younger son in particular because the oldest son will inherit the title and the estate. It's probably entailed on him. The younger sons need to make a living somehow. I note that many of the situations described after it are more likely in novels of adventure and drama than real life.
Leaving the family home ...
15
"It is not meet" basically means "it is not appropriate" or even "it is not right" (probably a better interpretation in this context). He's saying, more or less, that they shouldn't just leave Arthur in the state he's in, but someone should stay with him.
Meet, as defined in Lexico:
[archaic]
Suitable; fit; proper.
It doesn't ...
0
It popped up to me that it could be a typical Hughesean macabre way of referring to the protagonist's ancestors' cremation remains, put into a sachet bag.
This interpretation suits well to the refraining chorus of burned up objects, and also with those two lines that refer to mourning and burial:
[...]
The spark that banged burned out his weeper.
So he ...
7
Norman Sanders's edition of The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth (Penguin, 1981) glosses "chaos" (III.2.161) as "piece of shapeless matter", which is rather less cosmic than the Biblical meaning. Sanders adds a comment to "unlicked bear-whelp":
It was believed that bear cubs were born without form and licked into proper shape ...
7
One of Shakespeare’s rhetorical techniques is to follow a piece of difficult language with a gloss or explanation in simpler terms, so that you can get the overall meaning of a passage even if you don’t understand every word. I suggest re-reading the lines with this technique in mind:
To dis-proportion me in every part:
Like to a Chaos, or an un-lick’d Bear-...
3
This sentence is far from easy even for native English speakers! But we can get at its meaning if we pay attention to the context, and take it word by word.
Ishmael is attending the Sunday morning service at the Whaleman’s Chapel (a lightly fictionalized Seamen's Bethel) in New Bedford, Massachusetts. On the walls of the chapel are marble tablets ...
4
“Put upon” is just being used in its ordinary (non-idiomatic) sense of “placed in a particular situation or position”. The constable has been put upon (assigned to) a particular duty, namely that of “point work”.
You noted in the question that “put upon” has another sense, namely “imposed on, taken advantage of” and this other sense is attractive because the ...
0
The comparison here turns on "half-primitive vigor" vs. "racial senescence." A people early in their history (by which is generally meant their appearance in historical records -- a concept more applicable to civilizations, though not strong even there, but unfortunately commonly applied to races in 1932) are bursting with life and can-...
1
Windows and doors are often used as symbols, representing transition, or access to something, especially without fully immersing in it. Consider:
when one door closes, another opens
I shut the door on that possibility
the eyes are the window to the soul
for a brief window anything seemed possible
The passage seems to me to say that being surrounded by ...
2
I'm suprsed that the question was migrated. The use of "half + adjective" is common enough:
"He was half-dead with exhaustion".
"She was half-aware of a conversation taking place in the adjoining room".
"I was half-convinced by the ridiculous argument."
etc.
The meaning of "half" is not literal but more "...
3
In Shakespeare's time, "compass" could have meanings that have since become obsolete, for example, "circle, circumference" (see Peter Ure's edition) and "bounds, limits, range" (see Onions and Richard III, Act III, scene 4: "Why should we in the compass of a pale (...)").
In addition, "crown" could also mean &...
6
It is practice in modern-day beekeeping to have part of your hive separated by a gap that is large enough for the worker bees to get through but too small for the queen (a queen excluder). This ensures that the queen only lays eggs in part of the hive (the brood box), and you can freely harvest the rest for honey. This was invented by the Rev. Lorenzo ...
4
The first International Horse Show was held at Olympia in Jone 1907, and until halted by the First World War
established itself as one of the social events of the annual calendar. ‘In those great and far-off days almost everyone was horse-minded so it was hardly surprising that great success became the under-taking,’ wrote Geoffrey DS Bennett in Horse & ...
7
It transpires that part of the confusion with this sentence arises from a difference in the text between the first UK publication in the Strand magazine of September 1917 and the later collected stories as published in book form.
The Strand edition says (my emphasis)
'you are joining up with your old service'
The story takes place on the 2nd of July 1914, ...
0
Her refers to the babe - eventually. Nature, if you can order her mind as well as her face to be like her father's, then please put no yellow, or jealousy like his, within her. So that she will never suspect, like he (her father) does, that her children are not her husband's children.
5
The question is right that “grave” is used with the sense “dignified; serious”.
“Notations” is a typographical error for “flotations”. You can check this against page 32 of the 1931 Ward, Lock, and Co. edition on the Internet Archive:
“Rubber” is natural rubber (latex), which is used in the manufacture of pneumatic tyres and many other objects. In the early ...
2
A paraphrase would be God doesn't do more than He needs to. To paraphrase more closely we cannot presume that any divine act would include anything unnecessary.
Supererogation means doing more than is asked of you or than is required; it generally refers to what is morally required, but can refer to what is legally required or other areas as well (as the ...
1
We, in Turkey, use the word 'Pehlivan' as a synonym of 'wrestlers' (we do not use 'Pehliva' but phonetically it must be the singular form of 'Pehlivan') and metaphorically for 'valiant', 'brave', 'gallant' men.
According to Etimoloji Türkçe, this word is based etymologically on 'pahlavān پهلوان ' (a Late-Persian word) which again means 'valiant', 'brave.'
...
3
It’s clear from the context that the “tips” were on the underside of the boots:
In the shady hollows, the soft loam bore prints of many feet, and among them we could distinguish one with an iron toe-tip, but it was nearly obliterated by another studded with hob-nails. […] And here we both halted abruptly, for in the damp ground were the clear imprints of a ...
0
This is a partial answer, not definitive as I haven't been able to get my hands on a full unabridged translation of the original text of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh.
Firstly, let's note that the era being described in this part of the Shahnameh is an ancient time in Persia before the Islamic conquest, when Zoroastrianism was the dominant and state religion. This is ...
4
While the narration claims this is a cryptic answer, it is more in the sense of being cryptic to the other animals than to the reader. Benjamin is the oldest animal and the reader can intuit from this that he has seen a lot of events on the farm that the other animals have not.
This is the meaning of "Donkeys live a long time". "None of you ...
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