Literary notes about loose (AI summary)
The word loose—far from having a singular meaning—enriches literary texts by functioning in multiple registers. It frequently describes physical conditions, evoking images of unrestrained, shifting elements such as snow drifting around mountains [1], sand sprawled unevenly across a landscape [2, 3], or garments that hang unrestrictedly on the body [4, 5]. At the same time, loose captures the notion of release and liberation, whether it is emotion spilled onto paper [6], a sail liberated by a tempest [7], or even a letter’s restrained ideas suddenly taking flight [8]. In more abstract usage, authors employ loose to suggest imprecision or a lack of strictness, as in assertions unbound by caution [9] or in concepts critiqued for their slackness [10]. This variety in application illustrates how loose has been instrumental in painting vivid physical scenes while also conveying shifts in moral or intellectual boundaries across literary epochs [11, 12].
- The wind carried the loose snow around the mountain-sides in such volumes as to make it almost impossible to stand up against it.
— from Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete by Ulysses S. Grant - It was hard, smooth sand, very different from the loose, sharp sand, mingled with kelp and shells, at Brewster.
— from The Story of My Life by Helen Keller - Another part of it was dry, loose, newly-ploughed ground.
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain - He wore his pantaloons very loose and baggy in summer.
— from The Piazza Tales by Herman Melville - This odd little gentleman was dressed in a loose surtout of sky-blue satin, with tight breeches to match, fastened with silver buckles at the knees.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1 by Edgar Allan Poe - So far the letter had run composedly enough, but here with a sudden splutter of the pen, the writer's emotion had broken loose.
— from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - The tempest rose higher and higher, and presently the sail tore loose from its fastenings and went winging away on the blast.
— from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Complete by Mark Twain - It has caught you, no matter where or how, by some portion of your thought which was fluttering loose, by some distraction which had attacked you.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - [ The loose assertions of a general disgrace (Zosimus, l. iv.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - What then would tighten this loose universe, according to the professors?
— from Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking by William James - 2 The loose and imperfect practice of religion satisfied the conscience of the multitude.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon - What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish?
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville
