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Literary notes about indeterminate (AI summary)

The term "indeterminate" appears in literature to evoke a sense of vagueness or an open-ended quality, often pointing to aspects that resist precise definition or fixed boundaries. In narrative contexts, it conveys elusive distances, undefined time spans, or ambiguous perceptions—for instance, an "indeterminate distance" and an "indeterminate time" create moods of mystery and uncertainty ([1], [2]). In philosophical and scientific writings, the word is employed to articulate phenomena that are inherently vague or variable, such as the indeterminate harmonies in nature or the unintelligible expanse of space ([3], [4]). Legal and grammatical discourses similarly invoke "indeterminate" to describe situations lacking fixed limits, whether in the context of sentencing or in the acceptance of verbs with ambiguous meanings ([5], [6]). This versatility underscores its effectiveness in both concrete and abstract discussions across genres.
  1. For it was nothing but the mirage of an actual island, an indeterminate distance away.
    — from Under Sail by Lincoln Colcord
  2. After an indeterminate time—perhaps half an hour, perhaps an hour—I opened my eyes.
    — from Wounded and a Prisoner of War, by an Exchanged Officer by Malcolm V. (Malcolm Vivian) Hay
  3. Naturalists know well enough how indeterminate the harmonies between a fauna and its environment are.
    — from The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James
  4. Space is something so uniform and as to all particular properties so indeterminate, that we should certainly not seek a store of laws of nature in it.
    — from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant
  5. The necessary effect of the adoption of the indeterminate sentence for felonies is that every State prison and penitentiary must be a reformatory.
    — from The Complete Project Gutenberg Writings of Charles Dudley Warner by Charles Dudley Warner
  6. nom., with verb of indeterminate meaning, 1035 ; with other verbs, 1051 ; infin.
    — from A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane

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