Literary notes about initial (AI summary)
Throughout diverse literary works, “initial” carries several shades of meaning. Sometimes it highlights the earliest phase of a process or enterprise, such as a “boldness” that ignites the entire psychoanalytic movement [1] or the origin of life’s guiding ideal in philosophical deliberations [2]. In other cases, authors use “initial” to reference opening letters or signatures, whether branding a character with a single letter [3], indicating a maker’s mark [4], or denoting the start of a chapter [5]. Elsewhere, “initial” underscores how a first step sets the stage for everything that follows, as in the opening gift in ceremonial exchanges [6] or the earliest stage of learning in education [7]. Through these varied uses—whether textual, symbolic, or conceptual—“initial” often marks the point from which meaning unfolds.
- Just as little can you guess how intimate a connection this initial boldness of psychoanalysis has with the one which follows.
— from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud - What is the initial and commanding ideal of life by which all industrial developments are to be proved rational or condemned as vain?
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana - Whoa! (He brands his initial C on Bloom’s croup.)
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - " The only signature to these lines was the initial letter F, surrounded by a circle of intricate flourishes.
— from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - INITIAL LETTER OF A MS. COPY OF ST.
— from English Literature by William J. Long - The exchange is opened by an initial or opening gift called vaga , and closed by a final or return present called yotile .
— from Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronislaw Malinowski - The initial stage of that developing experience which is called thinking is experience.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey
