Literary notes about abreast (AI summary)
"Abreast" frequently serves to convey both literal and metaphorical side-by-side alignment in literature. In historical narratives and adventures, it vividly describes groups moving in orderly formations—be it cavalry charging four abreast ([1], [2]), horses harnessed in neat arrays ([3], [4]), or even ships positioned in parallel along a shoreline ([5], [6]). At times the term transcends physical alignment to suggest intellectual or social synchrony, as when characters are noted to keep abreast of modern ideas or current events ([7], [8]). This dual usage—illustrating both spatial formations and metaphorical accompaniment—demonstrates the word's enduring versatility in evoking precision and unity across diverse literary settings ([9], [10]).
- There coursed the thirty entire chargers, powerful, strong-backed, four abreast, the equal of ninety entire chargers, with 340 W. 5622.
— from The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Táin Bó Cúalnge - July 3 .—This forenoon, for more than an hour, again long strings of cavalry, several regiments, very fine men and horses, four or five abreast.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - Forty paces from him a carriage with four horses harnessed abreast was driving towards him along the grassy road on which he was walking.
— from Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy - ] Note 21 ( return ) [ Team of three horses abreast.
— from A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Iurevich Lermontov - It kept a-coming, and when it was abreast of me I see there warn’t but one man in it.
— from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain - The river abreast of the town is crowded with steamboats, lying in two or three tiers .']}
— from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain - Of course, he has his weaknesses, but he is abreast of modern ideas, is in the service, is of use to his country.
— from Project Gutenberg Compilation of Short Stories by Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov - He displayed similar capacity in administration and in keeping abreast of the times.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - Now I breathe the word of the prudence that walks abreast with time, space, reality, That answers the pride which refuses every lesson but its own.
— from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman - He had arrived, abreast of the best in his generation at Princeton.
— from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
