Literary notes about amorphous (AI summary)
The term “amorphous” is employed in literature with a striking duality—on one side it serves as a precise descriptor in scientific and technical discourse, and on the other it becomes a potent metaphor for vagueness and uncontrolled expression. In scientific contexts, “amorphous” denotes substances that lack a clearly defined crystalline structure or shape, as found in discussions about precipitates and powders ([1], [2], [3]). Conversely, literary authors use the word to evoke images of shifting, unformed realities and chaotic emotions; for instance, D. H. Lawrence portrays landscapes and moods as “amorphous,” imbuing them with a sense of restless indefiniteness ([4], [5], [6], [7]), while humor and exaggeration are achieved by applying the term to absurd or exaggerated human traits ([8]). This diverse application illustrates how “amorphous” seamlessly bridges the realms of the empirically precise and the imaginatively evocative in literature.
- In analysis, also, rapid precipitation from concentrated solution often causes the separation of a less stable and more soluble amorphous form.
— from The Phase Rule and Its Applications by Alexander Findlay - This substance is found in a great variety of forms in nature, both in the amorphous and in the crystalline condition.
— from An Elementary Study of Chemistry by William McPherson - Silica occurs under two conditions—the crystalline and the amorphous.
— from Cooley's Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions, and Trades..., Sixth Edition, Volume II by Richard Vine Tuson - He looked round at the red chaos, the rigid, amorphous confusion of Wiggiston.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence - The rigidity of the blank streets, the homogeneous amorphous sterility of the whole suggested death rather than life.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence - Everything was amorphous, yet everything repeated itself endlessly.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence - Nevertheless, amorphous as it might be, there was in it a reminiscence of the wondrous, cloistral origin of education.
— from The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence - And he said that the emu was as big as an ostrich, and looked like one, and had an amorphous appetite and would eat bricks.
— from Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World by Mark Twain
