Literary notes about ACHE (AI summary)
The word “ache” is employed in literature as a multifaceted device that evokes both physical pain and inner emotional turmoil. Writers deploy it to depict tangible discomfort—a head that aches [1, 2], bones that complain [3, 4], or even the precise pangs of tooth and stomach pain [5, 6]—while also using it to symbolize the deeper, ineffable experiences of sorrow and longing, as seen when the heart aches [7, 8] or a silent, pervasive ache underscores lost love or unmet desire [9, 10]. This dual usage enriches the narrative texture, allowing readers to connect with the characters’ corporeal and psychological states simultaneously.
- “Does your head ache very badly?” “Ve-ery.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - Except for champagne I never touch anything, and not more than a glass of that all the evening, and even that is enough to make my head ache.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - I am aweary, give me leave awhile; Fie, how my bones ache!
— from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare - By'r lakin, I can go no further, sir; My old bones ache.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - Yet is this no charm for the tooth-ache.
— from Much Ado about Nothing by William Shakespeare - It gave you the face-ache to look at his apples, the stomach-ache to look at his oranges, the tooth-ache to look at his nuts.
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens - I christened her by the same name we had given to the first, and she filled up the ache I felt at the other's loss.
— from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy - Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache as if something was being torn inside her and she were dying.
— from War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy - Always the ache, the ache of unreality, of her belonging to Skrebensky.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence - But hitherto the emotion had remained in him as a silent ache, veiling with sadness the beauty that evoked it.
— from Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
