Literary notes about Impervious (AI summary)
In literature, "impervious" is employed as a versatile word that conveys both physical impenetrability and emotional resilience. Authors use it to depict materials or surfaces that repel external forces—for instance, describing cloth that defies water or ground that resists moisture ([1], [2], [3])—while simultaneously using it to characterize individuals who remain unaffected by persuasion, argument, or external sentiments ([4], [5], [6]). In some works, the term even extends to landscapes or barriers that embody the idea of an unyielding frontier, enhancing the sensory and symbolic qualities of the narrative ([7], [8], [9]).
- These Ambrotypes are sealed with a durable cement, which renders them perfectly impervious to air, and even water itself.
— from Five Hundred Mistakes of Daily Occurrence in Speaking, Pronouncing, and Writing the English Language, Corrected by Walton Burgess - The greasy clay soon hardened in the sun, and became so impervious to water that the heaviest rains of summer made no impression upon it.
— from The Homesteaders: A Novel of the Canadian West by Robert J. C. Stead - These small fields are surrounded by a border of impervious clay.
— from Forty Years in South China: The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. by John Gerardus Fagg - To make matters worse, she was quite impervious to mercenary considerations, and could not be bribed in any way.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - “Are you quite impervious to good advice?”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - But her grace was impervious to hints, and invited or omitted as she chose.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton - Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious 227 and quaking swamps.
— from Excursions, and Poems The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume 05 (of 20) by Henry David Thoreau - I chose the safer sea, and chanced to find A river's mouth impervious to the wind, And clear of rocks.
— from The Odyssey by Homer - Snow noiselessly, winds tumultuously, assailed her; but she sat as impervious as though in an enchanted tower.
— from Out of the Air by Inez Haynes Gillmore
