Literary notes about eschew (AI summary)
The word “eschew” in literature is often used to indicate a deliberate avoidance or renunciation of something deemed undesirable. Authors employ it as a formal verb to express moral or aesthetic disfavor, whether advising the reader to shun vice or to abstain from certain indulgences. In some works, it conveys a measured commitment to uphold personal or societal ethics, as when a character refrains from unwelcome behavior to preserve dignity [1] or avoids dangerous elements as a means of self-preservation [2]. At other times, the term carries a poetic quality, suggesting an artful distancing from the mundane or excessive, as seen when the act of eschewing becomes a metaphor for liberating the spirit [3] or rejecting superficial trends [4]. Its usage cuts across genres and eras, reflecting both a timeless caution against harmful practices and a stylistic flourish that enriches the cadence of prose and verse [5][6].
- And since I digress constantly anyhow, perhaps it is as well to eschew apologies altogether and thus prevent their growing irksome.
— from Roughing It by Mark Twain - And then Noah entered in and his sons, his wife, and the wives of his sons, all into the ark to eschew the waters of the flood.
— from Bible Stories and Religious Classics by Philip P. (Philip Patterson) Wells - To eat is to eschew all prose, to spread the wings of the soul in glad poetic flight.
— from The Feasts of Autolycus: The Diary of a Greedy Woman by Elizabeth Robins Pennell - Her visiting of the prisons was set down to the same strange but harmless eccentricity which made her eschew jewels and wear robes of such sombre hue.
— from Darkness and Dawn; Or, Scenes in the Days of Nero. An Historic Tale by F. W. (Frederic William) Farrar - This I thee counsel eighthly: that thou guard thee against evil, and eschew deceit.
— from The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson by Sæmundur fróði - Eschew vain quarrelling, and the Achaeans old and young will respect you more for doing so.'
— from The Iliad by Homer
