Literary notes about Specify (AI summary)
In literature, “specify” is deployed both as a demand for exact precision and as a subtle cue that certain details will be left open to interpretation. Authors use it to insist on clear delineation of facts or attributes—demanding, for instance, that a particular quality or directive be stated outright ([1], [2], [3])—while in other contexts it signals the deliberate omission of exhaustive detail, allowing ambiguity to resonate within the narrative ([4], [5], [6]). It also appears in dialogue to prompt meticulous articulation of ideas or needs, thus bridging narrative description with character interaction ([7], [8], [9]).
- Both specify "the Word of Logos" as God.
— from The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors; Or, Christianity Before Christ by Kersey Graves - It is necessary to specify the kind of column in the blazon. Fig.
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies - In ordering books of which several editions are on the market, specify the edition you wish.
— from A Library Primer by John Cotton Dana - I mention this here once for all, for it is unnecessary in a translation to minutely specify the various readings on every occasion.
— from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch - I promised, a while ago, to specify some plagiarisms from Schiller, but I may safely refer to the whole book.
— from The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 09 Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig - There are ways——" But she did not go on to specify them.
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton - "Ah!" said the Phrygian to himself, "I will teach you to specify what you want, and not to trust to the discretion of a slave."
— from The Fables of La Fontaine by Jean de La Fontaine - This is all a matter of the nerves, I see: but just specify the vision."
— from Villette by Charlotte Brontë - Yet nothing is clearer to me than the black and desperate background behind those pieces—as I shall now specify them.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman
