Literary notes about Substantial (AI summary)
The word "substantial" carries diverse connotations in literature, functioning both as a descriptor of tangible heft and as a marker for significance or validity. Authors use it to characterize physical objects—a building that is “substantial and comfortable” [1] or a hearty meal described as “a substantial breakfast” [2]—while also attributing it to abstract qualities such as character or historical truth, as when a personal asset is deemed “a very substantial asset” [3] or a fact is noted to be recorded in "substantial history" [4]. In reflective and philosophical contexts, the term underscores a weighty, well-founded nature, contributing layers of meaning that imbue subjects with both physical presence and robust intellectual or emotional force [5, 6, 7].
- The streets are unusually wide, and the buildings appear to be substantial and comfortable.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - A table in the center was set with a good substantial breakfast.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - In the American Revolution, the personal character of George Washington was a very substantial asset.
— from Psychological Warfare by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger - A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be gainsaid.
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville - In fact, by a neat stratagem of ours, we raised the laugh against his Lordship, and something a great deal more substantial.
— from Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray - 128.—Too great cleverness is but deceptive delicacy, true delicacy is the most substantial cleverness.
— from Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims by François duc de La Rochefoucauld - Or, do men desire the more substantial and permanent grandeur of genius?
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson
