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Literary notes about Plump (AI summary)

In literature the word "plump" is employed to create vivid, tactile imagery that ranges from describing a character's physical robustness to capturing a cheerful, unpretentious charm. It often serves as a marker of wholesome fullness or vitality, as when Dickens portrays well-rounded gentlemen [1, 2] or when Alcott paints figures as rosy and heartily built [3, 4]. At times it emphasizes a character’s appealing sturdiness, as seen in descriptions of a well-fed beauty [5] or in the delicate portrayal of youthful cheeks and limbs [6, 7]. In other contexts the term contributes a sense of inevitability or density, whether referring to physical objects such as a plump turkey [8] or offering a humorous nod to human nature in both high and low settings [9, 10].
  1. The little man seemed rather baffled by these several repulses, and a short consultation took place between him and the two plump gentlemen.
    — from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
  2. After a few minutes’ silence, Mr. Dodson, a plump, portly, stern-looking man, with a loud voice, appeared; and the conversation commenced.
    — from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
  3. Next our peaceful Tupman comes, So rosy, plump, and sweet, Who chokes with laughter at the puns, And tumbles off his seat.
    — from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
  4. Won't it be fun to see you come home plump and rosy again?
    — from Little Women; Or, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy by Louisa May Alcott
  5. At twenty she had been a plump little beauty.
    — from The Gay Cockade by Temple Bailey
  6. She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen, plump as a partridge, ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father's peaches.—
    — from The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein
  7. Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its smokeblue mobile eyes.
    — from Ulysses by James Joyce
  8. Stephen looked at the plump turkey which had lain, trussed and skewered, on the kitchen table.
    — from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
  9. But to my story: once a well-fed Rat, Rotund and wealthy, plump and fat, Not knowing either Fast or Lent, Lounging beside a marsh pool went.
    — from The Fables of La Fontaine by Jean de La Fontaine
  10. large as life; plump as a dumpling, plump as a partridge; fat as a pig, fat as a quail, fat as butter, fat as brawn, fat as bacon.
    — from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget

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