Literary notes about stigma (AI summary)
The term "stigma" in literature exhibits a fascinating duality. In scientific and botanical contexts, it is carefully defined as the part of a flower that receives pollen—its form and structure described in meticulous detail (e.g., [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5], [6]). In contrast, literary works adopt "stigma" as a potent metaphor for a mark of disgrace or shame. It is used to denote a burden on one’s character or reputation, whether inherited, socially imposed, or self-inflicted (as seen in [7], [8], [9], and [10], [11], [12]). This versatility allows the word to traverse the realms of natural science and human experience, enriching texts with both literal and symbolic significance.
- Stigma peltate, sometimes bilobed, sometimes 4-lobed.
— from The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by T. H. Pardo de Tavera - Style very short and thick, stigma peltate, divided into 10 parts.
— from The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by T. H. Pardo de Tavera - Stigma cleft almost to the middle, 5-parted.
— from The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by T. H. Pardo de Tavera - Stigma cleft in 5 parts, which are twisted in spiral form.
— from The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by T. H. Pardo de Tavera - In most flowers belonging to other orders the stigma secretes a little viscid matter.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin - The pollinia are by this means transported by insects from one flower to the stigma of another.
— from The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin - What imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both!
— from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne - Yet, but for her, Arthur Wells would have gone to his grave bearing the stigma of moral cowardice, of suicide.
— from Sight Unseen by Mary Roberts Rinehart - On the other hand, I was brought up with a horror of cowardice and with a terror of such a stigma.
— from The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle - The stigma of his disgrace continued to raise its head.
— from Gunsight Pass: How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West by William MacLeod Raine - The woman is admitted into no such places; the Church casts her out; and a stigma is cast upon her, for what is called the slightest "impropriety."
— from History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I - It seemed to him that a stigma would attach to his name henceforward.
— from A Strange World: A Novel. Volume 1 (of 3) by M. E. (Mary Elizabeth) Braddon
