Literary notes about feculent (AI summary)
The word "feculent" is employed to evoke a vivid atmosphere of decay and filth in literature, functioning both in literal and figurative registers. In some contexts, it describes the physical properties of contaminated, excrement-like substances—as when repulsive matter streams down a face or invades bodily cavities ([1], [2], [3])—while in others it broadens its scope to characterize environments or institutions steeped in corruption and degradation ([4], [5]). Its application thus spans the clinical, as seen in detailed anatomical descriptions and medical treatises ([2], [6], [7]), to the metaphorical, where it powerfully conjures images of a morally and physically polluted world ([4], [8]).
- It hit him squarely in the face, and the feculent contents streamed down to his chin.
— from Out of the Hurly-Burly; Or, Life in an Odd Corner by Charles Heber Clark - Wounds of the intestines, whether transverse or longitudinal, attended with feculent escape into the peritoneal cavity, are not uniformly fatal.
— from Elements of Surgery by Robert Liston - At first the stools are feculent and pap-like; then they begin to smell bad, and even stink.
— from A System of Practical Medicine. By American Authors. Vol. 3 Diseases of the Respiratory, Circulatory, and Hæmatopoietic Systems - —The political cesspool is deeper, broader, filthier and more feculent than ever.
— from Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 by De Gurowski, Adam G., count - We longed impatiently to take a bath, but we found only a great pool of feculent water, surrounded with palm-trees.
— from Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 2 by Alexander von Humboldt - The protracted presence of feculent matter deadens the sensibility of the intestine, so that great stimulation is required to provoke it to action.
— from - Then the vomiting became feculent, the belly excruciatingly painful and tender, the tumour tense, and the pulse weak.
— from Elements of Surgery by Robert Liston - My feet are sinking deeper and deeper in the mud: I can scarcely keep my mouth above the surface of this feculent pool!”
— from The Camp of Refuge: A Tale of the Conquest of the Isle of Ely by Charles MacFarlane
