Literary notes about construct (AI summary)
The term "construct" is employed in literature with a broad range of meanings, spanning physical assembly to the creation of abstract ideas. In some works, it denotes the tangible act of putting parts together—whether building a rope-ladder for an eloping heiress [1], erecting barricades or dwellings [2, 3, 4], or even fashioning specific architectural elements [5, 6]—while in other contexts it takes on a more intellectual or metaphorical quality. Authors such as Helen Keller [7] and Immanuel Kant [8] use "construct" to signify the active formation of new worlds or conceptual frameworks, and figures like Coleridge [9] and George Eliot [10] invoke it to explore the personal and imaginative creation of identity or destiny. This multifaceted use enriches the term, allowing it to bridge the concrete and the abstract throughout diverse literary genres.
- He could construct a rope-ladder for an eloping heiress, or cord her boxes for a travelling maiden aunt.
— from What's Wrong with the World by G. K. Chesterton - They began to construct a barricade at the corner of the Rue du Cadran.
— from The History of a Crime by Victor Hugo - Now that wall was to protect the beach, and was a palisade such as we are wont to construct, and was completed in less than a morning.
— from The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. 1 by Emperor of Rome Julian - At all events they were living in small huts, about such as soldiers would hastily construct for temporary occupation.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. Grant - Then get the scaffolding ready, and proceed to construct the vaultings in the rooms, unless they are to be decorated with flat coffered ceilings.
— from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio - Then, upon this level surface construct a block as large as is required, and when it is finished, leave it for not less than two months to dry.
— from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio - And I, too, may construct my better world, for I am a child of God, an inheritor of a fragment of the Mind that created all worlds.
— from The World I Live In by Helen Keller - For mathematics must first have all its concepts in intuition, and pure mathematics in pure intuition, that is, it must construct them.
— from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant - But, surely, it would be strange language to say, that I construct my heart!
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Ardent souls, ready to construct their coming lives, are apt to commit themselves to the fulfilment of their own visions.
— from Middlemarch by George Eliot
