Literary notes about rasping (AI summary)
The term "rasping" is employed in literature to evoke sensations of harsh, grating sound that can characterize both physical noise and the emotional tenor of a scene. It is often used to describe voices that reveal a character’s fatigue, menace, or intensity—for instance, a commanding tone that unsettles listeners [1, 2, 3]—while also capturing ambient sounds, such as the creaking of machinery or the scraping of a sword [4, 5, 6]. Moreover, "rasping" infuses language with a tactile quality, suggesting the action of erosion or persistent friction, whether it’s a harsh remark or the mechanical grind of tools [7, 8, 9]. In doing so, it not only enriches the auditory imagery of a narrative but also mirrors the internal states and atmospheres that define the characters’ experiences [10, 11, 12].
- There was no mistaking the rasping tones of Captain Cusden.
— from Burgo's Romance by T. W. (Thomas Wilkinson) Speight - 'It is nearly twelve o'clock,' he said at length, in the rasping voice which set so many people's teeth on edge.
— from My Lords of Strogue, Vol. 2 (of 3) A Chronicle of Ireland, from the Convention to the Union by Lewis Wingfield - I cannot endure that rasping voice of Bridget’s .
— from The Circle of Knowledge: A Classified, Simplified, Visualized Book of Answers - He could feel it moving under his hands, rasping and creaking as it loosened inch by inch.
— from Space Station 1 by Frank Belknap Long - There was the rasping whine of a machine gun.
— from Creatures of the Abyss by Murray Leinster - The swords kept up an incessant thin rasping, with an occasional singing note as they parted company for thrust or parry.
— from Peggy O'Neal by Alfred Henry Lewis - The witty officer lifted at his left ear with his thumb, made a rasping noise in his throat, and said: “Out of prison—yes—ye say true.
— from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain - Without strength in his presence, she shuddered under his rasping glance.
— from The Works of Balzac: A linked index to all Project Gutenberg editions by Honoré de Balzac - Gemp stood shaving himself with one finger, as the curate passed on, and made a curious rasping noise as the rough finger passed over the stubble.
— from This Man's Wife by George Manville Fenn - Twenty years he wandered,—twenty years and more; and yet the hard rasping question kept gnawing within him, "What, in God's name, am I on earth for?"
— from The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois - The cry now had changed singularly; it had lost its penetrating volume, it had sunk into the rasping moan of one dreaming in a fever.
— from The Pace That Kills: A Chronicle by Edgar Saltus - called his mother again in her rasping voice which sounded as if she were choking in a perpetual spasm of moral indignation.
— from The Miller Of Old Church by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
