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Literary notes about Entirely (AI summary)

In literature, "entirely" functions as a powerful adverb to convey totality or completeness, sharpening imagery and emphasizing absolute states or conditions. Writers use it to denote that something is wholly consumed, surrounded, or defined by a particular quality—whether it be the hills lost "entirely in clotted murk" [1], a furnace's contents nearly "entirely spoiled" [2], or an individual's commitment to follow advice "entirely" [3]. The term can modify descriptions of inanimate features as in landscapes that "entirely" vanish [4] or objects "entirely" composed of a single material [5], as well as abstract qualities, such as a character being "entirely satisfied" or "entirely free" [6, 7]. This versatility allows authors from Jonathan Swift to Jane Austen to imbue their texts with a sense of emphatic finality, ensuring that what is meant by "entirely" leaves no room for partial or ambiguous interpretation.
  1. Brown vapor rose eternally from the valley flats; the hilltops lay lost entirely in clotted murk.
    — from The Best Short Stories of 1917, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story
  2. Then the smith came back and said that all that lay in the furnace came near being entirely spoiled.
    — from The Younger Edda; Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson
  3. Are you satisfied?” “Quite so; I have promised myself to be guided entirely by your advice, and I entreat you to remain always my best friend.”
    — from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova
  4. The city had entirely vanished.
    — from A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens
  5. It is made entirely of untanned, but dried, ox hide, and is about as hard as a piece of well-seasoned live oak.
    — from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
  6. The examination was over, though I doubted if the Coroner was entirely satisfied with it.
    — from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
  7. I shall not change; but I wish you to hold yourself entirely free.
    — from The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

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