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Literary notes about indistinct (AI summary)

Writers use "indistinct" to evoke a sense of vagueness and mystery across sensory experiences and memory. The term paints figures and landscapes that emerge only as blurred shapes in dim light, hinting at elusive realities that defy precise capture ([1], [2]). At the same time, it describes auditory fragments and recollections that are hazy and incomplete, suggesting that some aspects of experience remain just out of reach—whether it’s a half-remembered detail from the past or a sound barely caught by the ear ([3], [4]). This deliberate ambiguity deepens the narrative’s atmosphere, inviting readers to experience uncertainty and the liminal space between clarity and obscurity ([5], [6], [7]).
  1. Only a dim light pervaded the courtroom, and the spectators caught a very indistinct view of the prisoner when the guards brought him in.
    — from The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsène Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar by Maurice Leblanc
  2. The figure of a lady appeared at a distance, very indistinct in the darkness, and advancing with a slow and wavering movement.
    — from Daisy Miller: A Study by Henry James
  3. I have an indistinct recollection of having once seen a left-handed person from Nuwŭk.
    — from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson
  4. I had vague, indistinct yearnings to be a sort of emancipator,—to free my native land from this spot and stain.
    — from Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
  5. The vowel was so modified as to be indistinct.
    — from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
  6. “It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original æra of my being: all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct.
    — from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
  7. But there seemed to have sprung up in the brain, that of which no words could convey to the merely human intelligence even an indistinct conception.
    — from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe

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