Literary notes about ingrained (AI summary)
In literary texts, "ingrained" is used to evoke qualities and habits so deeply embedded that they seem an inherent part of a person’s nature or a society’s makeup. It conveys that certain behaviors, prejudices, or instincts are not easily altered by external factors—as when a character's habitual way of viewing the world is portrayed as a fixed aspect of their identity ([1], [2], [3]) or when cultural biases are depicted as having a long-standing, almost inherited presence ([4], [5], [6]). The word also extends to the physical, describing textures and marks that have become permanently embedded in objects or bodies ([7], [8], [9]). In each usage, "ingrained" underlines the idea that some attributes are fundamental and resistant to change, making them central to the thematic and descriptive force in literature.
- For example, it is an ingrained tendency of average human nature to be moved by the opinion of our neighbors.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - To speak the truth simply and plainly had become an ingrained habit.
— from The Sins of the Father: A Romance of the South by Dixon, Thomas, Jr. - Personally, I've got that principle somewhat ingrained.
— from The Recipe for Diamonds by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne - We must go back, once again, to the bed-rock of the peacock-popinjay vanity ingrained in human nature.
— from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies - [10] We of the [Pg 34] present generation, indeed, can scarcely understand how ingrained was racial hatred in the white frontiersman of that day.
— from The Washington Historical Quarterly, Volume V, 1914 by Various - You must remember that China has always been an exclusive country, and that the Chinese appear to have an ingrained hatred of foreigners.
— from With the Allies to Pekin: A Tale of the Relief of the Legations by G. A. (George Alfred) Henty - His trousers were tucked into his boots, and his gnarled and powerful hands, ingrained with dirt, clutched the arms of the seat as he leaned forward.
— from Project Gutenberg Complete Works of Winston Churchill by Winston Churchill - And the knight had upon his shoulder a shield, ingrained with gold, with a fesse of azure blue upon it, and his whole armour was of the same hue.
— from The Mabinogion - (In a week my hands had blistered, the blisters had broken, and over the cracked flesh ingrained with coal-dust healing callouses had begun to form.)
— from Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories; Second Series by James Edmund Dunning
