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Literary notes about pendent (AI summary)

The term "pendent" in literature is employed to evoke vivid images of things that hang or dangle, often imbuing the description with a sense of suspension or fragility. In many instances, it is used to portray natural beauty, such as the delicate, hanging bell-shaped blossoms on a spring flower ([1]) or the fine, suspended leaves of a birch tree ([2]). The word also appears in heraldic and emblematic contexts, serving to enhance visual and symbolic details—as seen when describing jewels or badges that hang from a shield ([3], [4], [5], [6]). Moreover, "pendent" can convey a dramatic, almost mystical quality, whether referencing a luminous arc of light dangling below a thumb ([7]) or the ethereal, chandelier-like crystals in a high-ceilinged room ([8]). Thus, across a range of contexts—from nature to myth, and tangible to metaphorical—the use of "pendent" enriches the imagery by highlighting elements that are elegantly suspended or dependent.
  1. They are quite hardy, and flower in the spring, bearing clusters of pendent bell-shaped flowers surrounded with tufts of fresh green leaves.
    — from Gardening for the Million by Alfred Pink
  2. Birch ( Betula ), is known by all on account of its chalk-white bark, and its fine, pendent leaves.
    — from The Circle of Knowledge: A Classified, Simplified, Visualized Book of Answers
  3. "Or, a file gules, with three bells pendent azure, clappers sable. (Belfile.)
    — from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies
  4. A Scottish Herald is entitled to do the same, and has also his badge, which he places below the escutcheon pendent from a ribbon of blue and white.
    — from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies
  5. In 1294 the seal of the Dauphin Jean , son of Humbert I. , bears the arms of Dauphiné pendent from the neck of a griffon.
    — from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies
  6. —Arms of Arbroath: Gules, a portcullis with chains pendent or.
    — from A Complete Guide to Heraldry by Arthur Charles Fox-Davies
  7. It was looped about the tips of her two upright thumbs; part of it had slipped through the palms and flashed like a pendent arc of light below.
    — from The Mettle of the Pasture by James Lane Allen
  8. Her white figure seemed shaped in snow; the pendent crystals of a great chandelier clicked above her head like glittering icicles.
    — from Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

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