Literary notes about APT (AI summary)
The word "apt" operates in literature with a dual nuance, often signaling both a natural tendency and a fitting quality. Authors employ it to describe behaviors or states that commonly occur—indicating that one is likely to act in a certain way, as when a character is apt to fall silent during a rainy evening [1] or a beginner is apt to complicate a task [2]. Simultaneously, "apt" conveys a sense of appropriateness or accuracy, suggesting that a chosen phrase or description perfectly suits its context, much like a saying that is particularly apt in capturing a mood or idea [3][4]. This layered usage allows writers to suggest both predictability in conduct and the precise resonance of a literary expression [5][6].
- On such evenings Margaret was apt to stop talking rather abruptly, and listen to the drip-drip of the rain upon the leads of the little bow-window.
— from North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell - And yet it is apt to perplex the novice a good deal if he wants to do it in the fewest possible pieces—three.
— from Amusements in Mathematics by Henry Ernest Dudeney - None could be more apt than that of Bubbles.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay - We may guess that it was a pretty apt expression, since long after the man had become lost to view Chichikov was still laughing in his britchka.
— from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol - I would find him sunk in a brown study, with his sharp eyes abstracted, and after those spells of meditation he was apt to be very despondent.
— from The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan - I tell you what,’ said Codlin, ‘for all his having a kind of way with him that you’d be very apt to like, I’m the real, open-hearted man.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens
