Literary notes about relatively (AI summary)
In literature, “relatively” is often used to introduce a comparison or to qualify an assertion whose absolute value is less important than its contextual relation. Authors employ the term to indicate that what is being described holds true only when compared to another element or under certain conditions. For instance, technical material may be described as “relatively technical” to distinguish it from more accessible content ([1], [2]), while geographical or historical comparisons, such as the diffusion of language or the extent of immigration, are also framed in relative terms ([3], [4]). Similarly, behavioral traits, physical dimensions, or even conceptual ideas are characterized not as fixed absolutes but as measurements in relation to other factors ([5], [6]). This usage allows authors to convey nuance and to soften definitive judgments, situating facts and opinions within a broader, comparative context ([7], [8]).
- Such material is relatively technical and superficial.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey - This will account for the relatively simple form of the work and the comparative absence of technical terms.
— from Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson - The French language had at that time almost as wide, perhaps relatively a wider, diffusion than it has now.
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Marco Polo and da Pisa Rusticiano - Relatively small has been the immigration from Hardanger, Sætersdalen and the vicinity of Stavanger.
— from A History of Norwegian Immigration to the United States by George T. Flom - Every individual comes into the world in possession of certain characteristic and relatively fixed behavior patterns which we call instincts.
— from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park - Or again, suppose two objects to be relatively great and small, these ideas of greatness and smallness are supplied not by the sense, but by the mind.
— from The Republic of Plato by Plato - And at the same time that it is relatively immutable, the concept is universal, or at least capable of becoming so.
— from The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Émile Durkheim - It made the elaboration of a technique of instruction relatively easy.
— from Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey
