Literary notes about gibbous (AI summary)
The term "gibbous" often conveys the idea of a rounded, bulging form, seamlessly bridging scientific description and poetic imagery. In celestial contexts, it describes the moon at a phase where its illuminated portion is more than half but not fully lit, evoking a mood of mystery and quiet power—as seen when the moon’s dim, gibbous light gently casts ghostly shadows over the landscape ([1], [2]). In other literary settings, the word is used with precision to depict objects with a hump-backed or convex appearance, lending both an organic naturalism and an almost sculptural quality to descriptions of shells, fungi, or even human features ([3], [4], [5]). This dual usage enriches the language by blending technical accuracy with evocative, atmospheric detail, allowing readers to visualize both the uncanny beauty of a nearly full moon and the subtle curves found in nature.
- Under the stars, under the gibbous moon, assuredly they would sleep.
— from Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley - A gibbous moon brightened the sky and silvered the slopes about me.
— from A Maid of the Kentucky Hills by Edwin Carlile Litsey - The shell is spiral, gibbous, pillar-lip transversely truncated, flattish.
— from Rudiments of ConchologyIntended as a familiar introduction to the science. by Mary Anne Venning - The pileus is often umbonate or gibbous, and the center is often darker than the margin.
— from Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. by George Francis Atkinson - He was more often at the telescope than at the Bachelors’, and seemed on the way to become almost as gibbous as the planet Mars.
— from The Prophet of Berkeley Square by Robert Hichens
