Literary notes about Sort (AI summary)
The word “sort” is employed with remarkable versatility in literature, often serving as a shorthand to indicate a particular kind or quality while also softening or qualifying a statement. Authors use it to delineate categories—whether referring to objects, classes of people, or experiences—with a casual specificity that enhances characterization; for instance, it designates tangible items as in a “sort of saddle-bag” ([1]) or even types of culinary creations ([2]), and it classifies people or social roles ([3],[4]). At the same time, “sort” is used to capture transient moods or abstract states, imbuing narratives with a conversational tone when describing moments of ecstasy or subtle psychological shifts ([5],[6]). Overall, the word bridges formal description with everyday nuance, making it a favored device across a wide span of literary texts ([7],[8]).
- When the warp runs vertically to the larger side, and ends in a fringe, that specimen was of course some sort of a saddle-bag.
— from The Oriental Rug by William De Lancey Ellwanger - This sort of gingerbread is baked daily and more sedulously than pure wheat or rye-and-Indian in almost every oven, and finds a surer market.
— from Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau - “What sort of a man is he?” “Ask the Vicomte de Morcerf.”
— from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - Though she is just the sort of beautiful creature that is imprisoned with ogres in fairy tales.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot - He prayed, and prayed aloud, no longer terrified at the sound of his own voice, for he fell into a sort of ecstasy.
— from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - Then as a sort of happy thought the notion came to him that he would go to sleep.
— from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad - “Dear, dear, abbe!” said I, laughing, “this sort of thing is not exactly proper in a man of your sacred profession.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - We get on because I understand her, I know the sort of girl she is.
— from The Portrait of a Lady — Volume 1 by Henry James
