Literary notes about profuse (AI summary)
The word "profuse" has been employed in literature to convey a sense of abundance or excess in both physical descriptions and abstract quantities. In some contexts, it paints vivid, sensory images, such as the profuse yellow spawn foaming over a character’s lips in Joyce’s portrayal ([1]), or describes nature’s overwhelming bounty with blossoms or flowers spilling over a landscape ([2], [3], [4]). At other times, "profuse" appears in more figurative or behavioral contexts: characters offer profuse apologies or thanks, symbolizing either sincerity or extravagance ([5], [6], [7]), while rhetoric itself may be critiqued for being overly profuse in style ([8]). The term is also used to indicate bodily phenomena—such as perspirations, bleeding, or sweating—that range from the clinical, as noted by Darwin and others ([9], [10], [11], [12]), to the dramatic portrayals in Poe’s works ([13]). Overall, the literary use of "profuse" suggests not only an excessive quantity but often an intensity that underscores the emotional, physical, or even aesthetic state of the subject.
- VIRAG: (Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips.)
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - In the present instance they were fully eight inches wide; but their glory was altogether eclipsed by the gorgeous splendor of the profuse blossoms.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe - Light, when answer none return'd, On a green shadie Bank profuse of Flours Pensive
— from The Poetical Works of John Milton by John Milton - In beds and curious knots, but nature boon Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain.
— from The Lady of the Lake by Walter Scott - Always be profuse in your apologies.
— from Simple Sabotage Field Manual by United States. Office of Strategic Services - Of course it was inexcusable of me, I know, but—” “Oh, dear me, I really do not require such profuse apologies,” replied the prince, hastily.
— from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Delisle was profuse in his thanks, little dreaming of the snare that was laid for him.
— from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay - So profuse and varied, indeed, is our use of these words that it is not easy to define just what we mean by them.
— from How We Think by John Dewey - The patient takes this decoction hot the first day of the fever and a profuse perspiration promptly breaks out.
— from The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by T. H. Pardo de Tavera - The result, in as far as it is incidental, may be compared with the profuse sweating from an agony of pain or terror.
— from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin - These signs are often accompanied or followed by profuse sweating, pallor, trembling, utter prostration, or faintness.
— from The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin - She lay in bed in a state of profuse and constant perspiration.
— from Juliette Drouet's Love-Letters to Victor Hugo by Juliette Drouet and Louis Guimbaud - There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe
