Questions tagged [wording-choice]
Questions about a writer's precise selection of words as determined by a number of factors, including denotative and connotative meaning, specificity, level of diction, tone, and audience.
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Use of "pounds" instead of "roubles" in passage of "The Idiot"
In the 1st Chapter, Part I of Dostoevsky's The Idiot (Eva Martin's translation) you can find the following passage:
These men generally have about a hundred pounds a year to live on (...)
In this ...
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2
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Use of the word "tyke" in American English, as it is used in "Gathering Blue"
In Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue, she used the word "tyke" instead of "boy" or "child". Do Americans use this word in a specific context? Her world in this novel is ...
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Why does Mussolini refer to war as female?
In the beginning of Chapter Three of his autobiography, Benito Mussolini writes the following:
War had come — war — that female of dreads and fascinations.
What is supposed to be conveyed by calling ...
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2
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Why did Hamlet tell Ophelia: "Get thee to a nunnery!"?
In Hamlet [III, 1], Hamlet tells Ophelia (lines 1814,27,34):
Get thee to a nunnery! […] Go thy ways to a nunnery. […] Get thee to a nunnery. […] To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. […] To a nunnery, ...
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"Marry, in her buttocks: I found it out by the bogs."
From The Comedy of Errors, Act III Scene II:
DROMIO OF SYRACUSE: No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip: she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her.
ANTIPHOLUS OF ...
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0
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Walter Malone's "The World is My Home"
Walter Malone's poem "The World is My Home" is, on the face of it, openly a plea for humanity to come together as one united brotherhood rather than engage in disputes and wars:
Travel to ...
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1
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Why was "a world" used in this sentence of Melville?
I cannot make much sense of "a world" in the following passage from Moby-Dick:
There’s your law of precedents; there’s your
utility of traditions; there’s the story of your obstinate ...
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1
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Origin and significance of E-I-E-I-O in the Old MacDonald song
The well-known children's song "Old MacDonald had a Farm" has lyrics in the following format:
Old MacDonald had a farm
E-I-E-I-O !
And on that farm he had {article} {singular or plural ...
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0
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What does "I ween that you are better where you are" in "The Heart of the Raven" mean?
The chorus of the song "The Heart of the Raven" by the German band MONO INC. goes like this:
But here in the raven's heart
Your heart is beating on
I ween that you are better where you are
...
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Why are the lotos-eaters "mild-eyed" and "melancholy"?
In Tennyson's famous poem "The Lotos-eaters", a group of mariners find themselves on an island inhabited by "Lotos-eaters", and themselves decide to stay after eating lotos has had ...
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1
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Which does this part refer to, a pencil or the words?
I’d like to ask about the sentence in The Red Circle by Conan Doyle.
The words are written with a broad-pointed, violet-tinted pencil of a
not unusual pattern.
This is uttered by Holmes when he saw ...
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0
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Why these specific "things that fly" in "Kite-Flying"?
Rose Justice, the main character of Rose Under Fire, writes several poems that appear in various places in the book. This is the second verse of Kite-Flying:
Hope waits stubbornly,
watching the sky
...
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1
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Why is death a redeemer in Robinson Jeffers's "Hurt Hawks"?
The poem "Hurt Hawks" by Robinson Jeffers is about a red-tailed hawk whose wing is so badly hurt that he'll never be able to fly again. Two lines of this poem are as follows:
The curs of ...
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2
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"otherwise" in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
In Chapter Seven of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (published 1816), I saw the following sentence:
I remembered also the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at the time that I dated my ...
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Why "in the midst of alarms" in William Cowper's poem "The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk"?
The second quatrain of William Cowper's poem "The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk" is:
O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
...
- 74.1k