Literary notes about Relegate (AI summary)
The term “relegate” serves in literature as a versatile device for devaluing, distancing, or consigning characters, ideas, or objects to a lower, often less significant position. It is used both literally—such as exiling an individual or banishing them to a remote physical location [1, 2]—and metaphorically, to demote esteem or importance, as when intellectual theories are pushed aside [3] or legendary figures are consigned to myth [4, 5]. Moreover, authors employ it to frame background actions or emotions as peripheral to the main narrative, thereby emphasizing shifts in status or attention [6, 7, 8].
- I have reflected where to send him and I have concluded to relegate him to Britain.
— from The Unwilling Vestal by Edward Lucas White - You relegate a mother's sacred responsibilities to a servant."
— from Little Aliens by Myra Kelly - These all tend to support my electrical theories, and relegate the Newton-La Place theories to the shades of obsolete fancy and mistaken conjecture.
— from The Universe a Vast Electric Organism by Geo. W. (George Woodward) Warder - As for the famous Hadgi-Stavros, whose name I have heard to-day, for the first time, he is a fabulous being whom one must relegate to Mythology.
— from The King of the Mountains by Edmond About - They are inclined to ‘relegate it into the region of myth;’ in plain English, to call old Herodotus a liar, or at least a dupe.
— from Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 by Charles Kingsley - Weigh the value of every detail introduced into a lead and cut out the unnecessary ones; relegate them to the rest of the story.
— from Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of Newspaper Writing by Grant Milnor Hyde - When conduct shall be entirely determined by rules, then it will be time to relegate character to the museum.
— from Samurai Trails: A Chronicle of Wanderings on the Japanese High Road by Lucian Swift Kirtland - Our economic conditions still relegate many men to a servile status.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey
