Literary notes about Complete (AI summary)
The term "complete" is used in literature to convey a sense of totality, finality, or perfection across diverse contexts. It can denote a finished state—such as a legal acquittal that has reached its final form [1] or the decisive end of an engagement [2]—while also emphasizing thoroughness, as when a character vows to provide confidence in an absolute sense [3] or when a thinker claims to have constructed a wholly unified system of thought [4]. The word is equally at home in describing physical or abstract conditions, from the circumscribed bounds of a set of attire [5] to the transformative impact that brings about a complete change in appearance or spirit [6]. In each case, "complete" functions as an intensifier that enhances the reader’s understanding of a state or process as being fully realized or unconditionally absolute [7, 8].
- Seen from outside it can sometimes seem that everything has been long since forgotten, the documents have been lost and the acquittal is complete.
— from The Trial by Franz Kafka - His revenge would have been complete indeed.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - "I promised you that this confidence should be complete," he whispered, speaking close at my ear, with his eyes looking watchfully at the door.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - It is to be in the position of Aristotle or (at the lowest) Herbert Spencer, to be a universal morality, a complete system of thought.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. Chesterton - Finally he unravelled a bundle of clothing, comprising a complete set of underclothes, socks, a gray tweed suit, and a short yellow overcoat.
— from The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle - Five minutes had sufficed to make a complete transformation in his appearance.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - Rendered complete by drab pantaloons and a buff waistcoat, I thought Mr. Barkis a phenomenon of respectability.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - But for the moonlight they would have been in complete darkness.
— from Jane Eyre: An Autobiography by Charlotte Brontë
