Literary notes about spike (AI summary)
The word "spike" serves as a multifaceted tool in literature, employed to evoke both tangible and figurative imagery. In botanical descriptions, it denotes a long, slender structure bearing flowers or buds that ascend orderly along a stem [1], [2]; in such instances, the spike conveys growth and natural progression. On the other hand, when used as a proper name or in character descriptions, it often imbues figures with a distinctive, rough-edged personality [3], [4]. Additionally, "spike" is deployed metaphorically to capture intensified emotions—such as a sudden surge of bitterness that lingers [5]—or to denote pointed instruments, whether they be the tip of a spear [6] or a tool integral to a mechanical process [7]. In these ways, the term enriches literary language by traversing the realms of nature, character identity, and abstract sentiment.
- The flower spike is long and contains many buds on slender pedicels; they open from the bottom of the spike upward.
— from Flower Guide: Wild Flowers East of the Rockies (Revised and with New Illustrations) by Chester A. (Chester Albert) Reed - The inflorescence is a simple slender curved spike.
— from A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses by K. Rangachari - In spite of himself, Spike felt a genial warming toward this boyish-faced man.
— from Midnight by Octavus Roy Cohen - Even Spike himself seemed to be aware that there were points in his appearance which would have distressed the editor of a men's fashion paper.
— from The Gem Collector by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse - No, for he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be done away.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - (2) I.e. with a single point or spike only, the Hellenic spear having a spike at the butt end also.
— from Anabasis by Xenophon - Come hammer, caulking-iron, pitch-pot, and marling-spike!
— from Moby Dick; Or, The Whale by Herman Melville
