Literary notes about neat (AI summary)
The word neat is deployed in literature to convey notions of order, elegance, and precision in both physical appearances and abstract constructs. In some instances it describes tidy, attractive settings—a neat travelling carriage in a bustling social scene ([1]) or the clean, well-arranged rooms of a house ([2], [3], [4]). It is equally effective in characterizing individuals whose personal appearance is marked by careful presentation, as when a man’s attire is noted as scrupulously neat ([5], [6], [7]). Meanwhile, neat extends into more figurative realms to denote clarity and simplicity in language or thought ([8], [9], [10]), and even into culinary expressions as in “a glass and a half of neat spirit” ([11]). In this way, neat functions as a versatile descriptor that enriches both visual imagery and conceptual nuance throughout literary works.
- Finally there was a very neat, handsome travelling carriage, about which the gentlemen speculated.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - They arrived in front of a very neat little white house.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant - The sign was newly painted; the windows had neat red curtains; the floor was cleanly sanded.
— from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson - The bed and the little window had curtains, and everything looked clean and neat.
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. Andersen - He was seven or eight years old, rather pale, very neat, with a timid and almost awkward manner.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant - And his waist was slender to a degree and his navel neat; and smooth also was the region about his ribs.
— from The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 - Biddy, looking very neat and modest in her black dress, went quietly here and there, and was very helpful.
— from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens - Cat. 1, 1, unto whom shall I give the neat new booklet?
— from A Latin Grammar for Schools and Colleges by George Martin Lane - simple, uniform, of a piece[Fr], homogeneous, single, pure, sheer, neat.
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget - Every object, whether the growth of nature or the work of man, was neat and artificial.
— from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - “A glass and a half of neat spirit—is not at all bad, don't you think?
— from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
