Literary notes about Hoarse (AI summary)
Writers use "hoarse" to evoke a rough, strained quality that reflects both physical fatigue and deep emotion. It often appears when a character's voice is worn by sorrow, anger, or exhaustion—as when indignation renders one’s cry ragged ([1], [2])—or when nature itself seems to emit a harsh, brooding sound, like a brutal roar of water or the resounding depth of battle ([3], [4]). The adjective can also lend a sinister, foreboding quality when voices are compared to ominous creatures, enriching the atmosphere with an edge of menace or vulnerability ([5]). This versatile term transforms simple descriptions of sound into potent symbols of inner turmoil and environmental intensity ([6], [7]).
- She shrieked in a voice rendered hoarse with indignation:— “Cosette!” Cosette started as though the earth had trembled beneath her; she turned round.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - He was so hoarse that Alice could scarcely hear him.
— from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll - Away in the night was a hoarse, brutal roar of a mass of water rushing downwards.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence - Their troops in thirty sable vessels sweep, With equal oars, the hoarse-resounding deep.
— from The Iliad by Homer - He was looked upon as a false prophet, or compared to the hoarse raven, croaking omens of evil.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay - I have laboured with crying; my jaws are become hoarse, my eyes have failed, whilst I hope in my God.
— from The Bible, Douay-Rheims, Complete - A hoarse, broken tone, which was neither a cry nor a sigh, escaped from her, while she became deadly pale.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet
