Literary notes about Tender (AI summary)
The word tender weaves a rich tapestry of meanings throughout literature, ranging from delicate emotional sensitivity to precise technical usage. In many works, its gentle nuance conveys warmth, care, and a softened heart—illustrated in personal relationships and nurturing behavior [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]—while in other contexts it speaks to fragility or the freshly developing state of nature or materials [7, 8, 9, 10, 11]. Moreover, the term can extend to formal or legal registers, as seen when describing the precise nature of currency [12, 13, 14]. Such variability underscores tender’s ability to adapt its gentle inflection to both clearly emotive encounters and contexts demanding technical specificity [15, 16].
- —Ovid, De Ponto., i. 5, 18.] I have ever been very susceptibly tender as to offences: I am much more tender now, and open throughout.
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne - Neither can I any longer live without her companionship; so powerful is she to sustain—so tender to soothe!
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Children form a bond between their parents, a bond no less tender and a bond which is sometimes stronger than love itself.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - He kissed his daughter with that tender affection which is more characteristic, I think, of English parents than those of any other nation.
— from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Complete by Giacomo Casanova - Sophy, peaceful and happy, spends the day in the arms of her tender mother; a pleasant resting place, after a night spent in the arms of her husband.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - “How kind has he ever been to all my follies, how tender and indulgent to all my wishes!”
— from The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 by James Fenimore Cooper - And every bough and tender spray With a bright load of bloom is gay, And every flower the breeze has bent Fills all the region with its scent.
— from The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Valmiki - It was not that I did not love the tender branches; But better still,—to see the green hills!
— from A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems - So one evening when the flock started home from the pasture and his mother called, the Kid paid no heed and kept right on nibbling the tender grass.
— from The Aesop for Children by Aesop - As a result either the tender leaves are cooked to death or the stems are still hard.
— from Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome by Apicius - [244] leaves, when they are young and tender, they are held to provoke urine.
— from The Complete Herbal by Nicholas Culpeper - Copper is not at present a legal tender, except in the change of the smaller silver coins.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith - His position towards Legal Tender was awkward.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams - abdicate; vacate, vacate one's seat; accept the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds; retire; tender one's resignation.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget - — JOY, HIGH SPIRITS, LOVE, TENDER FEELINGS, DEVOTION.
— from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin - mellow, pastel, harmonious, pearly, sweet, delicate, tender, refined.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget
