Literary notes about Degree (AI summary)
The term “degree” is employed in literature as a versatile measure of extent, intensity, or quality. Some authors use it to quantify development or progress, as in describing the relatively limited advancement of commerce in feudal Japan [1] or the comparative intensity of characteristics in individuals [2]. In scientific and technical contexts, “degree” can indicate proportions or gradations, such as levels of transportation efficiency [3] or precise measurements in observational descriptions [4]. It is equally common to find the term used metaphorically to express emotional, intellectual, or moral intensities, from the “last degree” of severity in physical or psychological states [5, 6] to subtle distinctions in social or academic rankings [7, 8]. Thus, across genres, “degree” functions as a flexible descriptor that contextualizes both quantifiable data and abstract qualities.
- Commerce, therefore, in feudal Japan did not reach that degree of development which it would have attained under freer conditions.
— from Bushido, the Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobe - Men possess it to a higher degree than women; in relation to them, women are like profane beings.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim - In the second place, the modern machinery of transportation has in a far higher degree facilitated the transport of goods than of persons.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - The northern-lights shone with such precision that one could tell exactly when they were at their highest or lowest degree of brightness.
— from Andersen's Fairy Tales by H. C. Andersen - I talked to her on the subjects which occupied my thoughts; and I read Shakespeare to her—and fatigued her to the last degree.
— from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens - The mere conception of a plain-speaking world is calculated to reduce one to the last degree of despair; it is the conception of the intolerable.
— from Essays of Schopenhauer by Arthur Schopenhauer - Then the Master's degree was not as indiscriminately conferred as it is now.
— from The Principles of Masonic Law by Albert Gallatin Mackey - Have received the degree of doctor of medicine from one of the medical faculties of the Empire; 4th.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson
