Literary notes about absorb (AI summary)
The word "absorb" in literature is employed in both literal and metaphorical manners. Physically, it describes how substances take in or hold on to elements like light, oxygen, or liquids—as in discussions of materials that absorb light ([1], [2]), heat ([3], [4]), or even mundane substances like manure ([5], [6]). Metaphorically, authors use it to illustrate a deep and total engagement or assimilation: characters become completely absorbed in a thought or emotion ([7], [8]), histories or cultures are depicted as absorbing influences from others ([9], [10]), and even abstract ideas like truth or the weight of personal experience are portrayed as being absorbed until nothing is left unassimilated ([11], [12]). This dual usage allows "absorb" to evoke both the tangible process of intake in the physical world and the intangible process of mental, social, or cultural envelopment.
- If it did not absorb any particular part of the light, but reflected it all, then it would be a shining white box.
— from The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance by H. G. Wells - A box of very thin common glass would be hard to see in a bad light, because it would absorb hardly any light and refract and reflect very little.
— from The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance by H. G. Wells - But would not the canisters of boiling water also absorb caloric in different degrees in a room of the common temperature?
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - These absorb heat and radiate it back into the blackness of space.
— from Rockets, Missiles, and Spacecraft of the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution - The best plan I have yet tried is, to throw horse-manure, or sheep-manure, back of the cows, where it will receive and absorb the urine.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - To use sufficient bedding to absorb all the urine in the stable.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson - Sat for over an hour before the picture, completely absorb'd in the first view.
— from Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman - One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details.
— from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - Indeed, Buddhism is quite ready to adopt, absorb and swallow up Japanese Christianity.
— from The Religions of Japan, from the Dawn of History to the Era of Méiji by William Elliot Griffis - London could never quite absorb Yorkshire, which, in its turn had no great love for London and freely showed it.
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams - My life glided on, the past appearing to mingle with the present and absorb the future, till the whole lies before me at a glance.
— from Twice-told tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne - "The world can absorb only doses of truth," he said; "too much would kill it."
— from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams
