Literary notes about Slab (AI summary)
In literature, the word "slab" is frequently used to evoke a sense of solidity and permanence, whether it marks a grave or forms a part of a building’s structure. It can literally denote a heavy, flat stone—as seen when marble slabs mark tombs, immortalizing lives with etched epitaphs ([1], [2], [3])—or describe architectural elements that ground settings in a tangible reality, such as the concrete slab near a fortress or the door slab of an ancient edifice ([4], [5]). At times, the term also enters more quotidian contexts, appearing as a resting place or even a cooking surface, thereby blending the extraordinary with the everyday ([6], [7]). Through its varied usage, "slab" carries with it connotations of cold permanence and enduring weight, both in physical form and in symbolic significance ([8]).
- His grave is in the precincts of the church and is already covered with a marble slab.
— from The possessed : by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - The grave of the captain killed at Tonquin had no mourner on its marble slab, no flowers, no wreath.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant - On his grave was laid a marble slab, on which the words "O rare Ben Jonson" were his sufficient epitaph.
— from English Literature by William J. Long - The ship landed gently on a pitted concrete slab near the massive radiation shields of the barricaded entranceway to the fortress.
— from The Lani People by Jesse F. Bone - The door was a large flat slab of stone, as on tombs; the sort of door which serves for entrance only.
— from Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo - Then sprinkle the marble slab with some of the spare flour, take the lump of paste from the pan, and roll it out into a sheet.
— from Miss Leslie's New Cookery Book by Eliza Leslie - At Macon City she spoke to them in an abandoned barracks, and slept in a slab house.
— from The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) by Ida Husted Harper - The chill air of the night seemed to lie on my limbs as heavy as a slab of marble.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
