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].
- 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - At twenty she had been a plump little beauty.
— from The Gay Cockade by Temple Bailey - 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 - Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its smokeblue mobile eyes.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - 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 - 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 - 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