Literary notes about thereby (AI summary)
In literature, thereby is often employed to indicate that one action directly produces a specific result or transformation. It serves as a linguistic bridge connecting cause with effect, allowing writers to condense complex chains of reasoning or sequence events into a single, elegant term. For instance, it may illustrate how a grammatical limitation confers definiteness ([1]), or how the execution of a decision cuts off alternative outcomes in a narrative ([2]). Philosophical and dramatic texts further utilize thereby to heighten the connection between ideas and their inevitable consequences, as when a character’s seemingly small gesture unveils a profound personal recognition ([3]) or when a legal provision is shown to negate certain risks ([4]). This versatile term thus not only clarifies relationships between actions and their results but also enriches the rhetorical impact of the prose ([5]).
- If the word indicating the whole is limited by la , it is thereby made definite: Telero de la maturaj pomoj , a plate of the ripe apples .
— from A Complete Grammar of Esperanto by Ivy Kellerman Reed - First of all, we destroy all our vessels, and thereby cut off all hopes of escaping from this country.
— from The Memoirs of the Conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Vol 1 (of 2) by Bernal Díaz del Castillo - But that thou passedst me by in silence, that thou blushedst—I saw it well: thereby did I know thee as Zarathustra.
— from Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - He is thereby enabled to make his clear gain of interest on so much a larger sum.
— from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith - Everything that is to be cognised a priori , is thereby announced as apodeictically certain, and must therefore be proved in this way.
— from Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant
