31
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "She had all the colour and dynamism of a parsnip"
I don't think "to have a parsnip" is at all related to the meaning here. Rather, this is figurative language. These are parsnips:
As you can see, parsnips do not have any color. They aren't ...
- 9,015
28
votes
Is "I'm glad you think it's funny" meant sarcastically or literally?
One of the big problems in written English is representing spoken conversation.
When someone speaks, they typically emphasize certain words. HTML even provides a tag for this:
The placement of stress ...
- 754
13
votes
Is "I'm glad you think it's funny" meant sarcastically or literally?
You're right, "I'm glad you think it's funny" is used sarcastically. It is almost always used in that way. For example, if I trip and fall and you start laughing, I might say to you: "I'...
- 17k
11
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "as it was, she witnessed minor twinges of the appropriate emotions occurring distantly, as if to some other girl"
The meaning of "as it was" has been asked about on the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange site in 2013: Meaning of “as it was” in context. In short, "as it was" is the ...
- 67.9k
8
votes
Accepted
What do "Things were buzzing" and "school swot. Swat, get it?" mean?
They're inventing a joke story based on puns.
Elizabeth says "Mosquito Girls' High" and then the two girls proceed to make a number of jokes and puns based around insects, starting from the &...
- 67.9k
7
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "The blushing apricot, and woolly peach. Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach."
The sentences you quote appear to be straightforwardly literal rather than metaphorical. The father was walking away simply means that in the picture, the older man is walking while facing away from ...
- 17k
7
votes
Is "I'm glad you think it's funny" meant sarcastically or literally?
This is Australian spoken English and the phrase is fairly common. I would argue "I'm glad you think it's funny" in this context is meant both ways by the character. It's both "I'm glad ...
- 814
7
votes
What does "hawk" mean in the context below?
In context, it surely means clearing phlegm from the throat and spitting.
There are a few meanings of the word "hawk", but just two main meanings (or collections of related meanings) as an ...
- 67.9k
6
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "Dexter walked with a bandy, rapid gait. They kept pace easily, not touching."
Yes, it means Dexter was walking quickly, albeit in a bandy or bow-legged fashion.
To keep pace means not to fall behind or go ahead of someone you're walking or running with, so it means that they ...
- 17k
6
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "the kind of woman who’d throw round terms like the orthodox feminist position. "
The phrase "the kind of woman who’d throw round terms like the orthodox feminist position" does not imply that the woman in question is a feminist, or talks like a feminist, but simply that ...
- 9,015
6
votes
Meaning of "as it was, she witnessed minor twinges of the appropriate emotions occurring distantly, as if to some other girl"
Yes, your understanding is correct. If she had not been half-drunk, she would have felt guilty about the untidiness of the room. But because the drink subdues her ability to feel emotions clearly, she ...
- 17k
6
votes
Meaning of "and light shows between his tightly buttoned torso and his father’s leg."
The context of the quoted passage is that
Dexter found, in a magazine, a photograph of the poet Tennyson, his wife and their two sons walking in the garden of their house on the Isle of Wight.
So we ...
- 47.7k
5
votes
Meaning of "and light shows between his tightly buttoned torso and his father’s leg."
Gareth Rees found the photo itself, which answers your question about the meaning, but let's also clear up any doubt about grammatical ambiguity of the phrase.
You asked whether "light shows ...
- 67.9k
5
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "visions of meadows" and "along which her disembodied consciousness progresses to a stately pulse."
Her sexual life is solitary:
This bit is important, it sets the context for the rest. 'Her sexual life is solitary'.
A solitary sexual life is one that does not include a partner, so it needs must ...
- 17.3k
4
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "He went ‘Eeeeee!’ high up in his skull"
It means the former: he screamed "Eeeee!" in a high voice that echoed in his skull. There are six main areas of vocal resonance in the human body. Of these six, one is the upper skull. In ...
- 17k
4
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "she felt him give" in "The Children's Bach" by Helen Garner
To press someone is to try hard to get a response from them. See sense 6b of the verb press in Merriam-Webster:
to insist on or request urgently.
When Athena tries to get an answer from the man, he ...
- 17k
4
votes
Meaning of "The blushing apricot, and woolly peach. Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach."
“The blushing apricot, and woolly peach. Hang on thy walls, that every
child may reach.”
This presumably refers to espaliered fruit trees, which are trained to grow flat against a wall, tied to a ...
- 143
4
votes
Meaning of "Now things can only get better" and "starry cold" in the passage below
Vicki observes that Dexter eats in an incredibly sloppy, even disgusting, way. She thinks that the worst thing about the entire situation is the way he eats; he could not possibly be any more off-...
- 17k
4
votes
Accepted
What does "Sensible plans of action clicked their wooden sides together without meaning," mean?
Sometimes you have to bring a little imagination to your interpretation of a work. This author seems to use a lot of non-standard similes and imagery in her work, so there will not always be a ...
- 17.3k
3
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "he’d go down between sets and find her"
Set means, assuming these people are in a band, means the group of songs they perform. Rather than take a break after each song, or not take a break at all they take a break between each ‘set’.
‘...
- 17.3k
3
votes
Is "I'm glad you think it's funny" meant sarcastically or literally?
This is meant sarcastically. A more accurate word than sarcasm would be antiphrasis. Antiphrasis is the rhetorical device of saying the opposite of what is actually meant in such a way that it is ...
- 31
3
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "In the wide planting of his feet, his blithe assumption of an audience, she saw Dexter"
The sentence means:
In the way he stood with his feet placed widely apart, and in his belief that people would naturally want to listen to what he had to say, the boy reminded her of Dexter.
I have ...
- 17k
3
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "this patient setting out of facts and services."
Your understanding of the "repeated the performance in his language" is correct. The word "performance" is being used in sense 4 of the Dictionary.com definition:
a particular ...
- 9,015
3
votes
Meaning of "Low down on the sky was a narrow band of apricot, all that was left of the daylight."
Apricot here is a color, the color of the horizon as the sun was setting.
- 257
3
votes
Meaning of "Now things can only get better" and "starry cold" in the passage below
‘Things can only get better’ is a general phrase expressing optimism for the future after bad experiences. Similar to ‘the only way is up’, it expresses the view that the worst is past and improving ...
- 17.3k
3
votes
Accepted
Can authors use past tense in fiction works to refer to an unreal situations without using "if"?
Graffiti is often opaque in meaning, it is okay to accept an author’s description of it as purely scene setting. It may not be necessary to know what was in the mind of the person who wrote it. We ...
- 17.3k
2
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "in whose presence nothing is required but perfect passivity."
The pronoun "it" in "Then it began again" refers back to "Mrs Fox’s discourse", which is the grammatical subject of the preceding sentence. This discourse
is very long (...
- 43.2k
2
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "They wanted to know each other less than they wanted to agree. Harmony! To be each other"
These characters care more about surface-level, outward agreement than true understanding of each other. They want to feel as if they are together and in harmony with each other. They want this even ...
- 9,015
2
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "Air rushed over the ground like a flood of water at blood temperature"
It's not possible to understand the full meaning of this sentence by just giving the meanings of the individual words. It's a simile, and a complicated one at that.
You are correct in thinking that &...
- 9,015
2
votes
Accepted
Meaning of "the boy who is turned towards the drama of his parents’ faces."
The photograph is this one:
Hallam is looking up at his parents' faces as though he is trying to understand what their expressions convey. He is thus like a spectator watching the actors in a drama. ...
- 17k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible