Literary notes about Call (AI summary)
The word "call" is employed with great versatility in literature, serving as a tool to designate, summon, or evoke thought. It can simply denote naming—like bestowing a title, as seen when a character is designated by a particular name [1] or when an object is named metaphorically [2]—or it can imply a summons, whether calling someone for a visit [3, 4] or enlisting figures for judgment [5]. Moreover, it functions in a more abstract or psychological sense as a means to evoke specific associations or feelings, such as the call of a memory arising suddenly [6] or a pause for thought [7]. Even in discussions of power and identity, the term offers a way to underscore the act of attributing qualities or functions to people or things [8, 9]. Across a range of genres and contexts, "call" becomes an effective expressive device that enriches dialogue and deepens narrative layers.
- Walking up to Bob, the sheriff inquired: "Where's the boy they call Platt?"
— from Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup - I place in a certain situation on the idea of an object, which I call the globe.
— from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume - If Mr. and Mrs. Weston will be so obliging as to call here one morning, we may talk it over, and see what can be done.”
— from Emma by Jane Austen - It was Mrs. George Dorset—she said she'd dropped in to make a neighbourly call.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton - And then he let call his barons to judge Sir Tristram to the death.
— from Le Morte d'Arthur: Volume 1 by Sir Thomas Malory - If only to-morrow on awaking, I could again call all to mind so vividly!
— from Andersen's Fairy Tales by H. C. Andersen - But this cordial agreement with my remarks I had not foreseen, and it gave me what you might call pause for thought.
— from Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse - We call such a constant relationship between a dream element and its interpretation symbolic .
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud - Arnold's literary work divides itself into three periods, which we may call the poetical, the critical, and the practical.
— from English Literature by William J. Long
