Literary notes about perspicuous (AI summary)
Writers employ "perspicuous" to describe language that is strikingly clear and accessible, emphasizing logical structure and ease of understanding. In many works, the term underscores how an author’s direct and unambiguous style can render even complex ideas transparent and compelling ([1], [2]). It is often used to praise compositions that marry concision with lucidity—whether in legal discourse, where every term must be incontestable ([3], [4]), or in literature that invites the reader to appreciate the clarity of thought without needless obscurity ([5], [6]). In other instances, the term contrasts with passages that dip into ambiguity, marking the deliberate choice for style that is straightforward and perspicuous as a commendable literary achievement ([7], [8]).
- His plain and perspicuous style is often elegant.
— from The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 26, December, 1859 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics by Various - Gray said himself that the style he aimed at was 'extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical.'
— from Six Centuries of English Poetry: Tennyson to Chaucer by James Baldwin - c. 3. are repealed or abrogated; the latter those which are plain, perspicuous, liable to no doubt, and in full force.
— from The Koran (Al-Qur'an) - Every note, in short, is a model of legal analysis; and the style, also, is pure, simple, terse, and perspicuous.
— from Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 61, No. 376, February, 1847 by Various - The necessary connexion of thought with the construction of a perspicuous sentence, has not, to my knowledge, been previously noticed.
— from On the Nature of Thought Or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence by John Haslam - To be clear or perspicuous a meaning must be detached, single, self-contained, homogeneous as it were, throughout.
— from How We Think by John Dewey - What followed was far from being equally perspicuous.
— from The War Trail: The Hunt of the Wild Horse by Mayne Reid - This was not very perspicuous, but Mrs. Dundyke did not care for minor details.
— from Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 3 (of 3) by Wood, Henry, Mrs.
