Literary notes about twine (AI summary)
The term "twine" is employed with remarkable versatility, oscillating between its literal meaning as a form of cordage and its metaphorical use as a binding force. In technical or narrative contexts, it refers simply to a physical string used to secure objects – from tying a fishing rod’s tip [1] to mending herring nets [2] and even marking the ends of ropes [3]. At the same time, its poetic usage often suggests the interlacing of lives, emotions, or fates, evoking imagery of delicate, intertwining bonds as seen when arms or hair are wound like a garland [4, 5], or even when hearts and destinies are depicted as inextricably linked [6, 7]. This dual significance enriches literary language, allowing "twine" to simultaneously serve as a marker of both tangible and symbolic connection.
- Jack was fishing with a bamboo rod, to the end of which he had tied a short piece of ordinary twine.
— from An Advanced English Grammar with Exercises by Frank Edgar Farley and George Lyman Kittredge - He began to collect them and sort them out, in packages of a hundred, tying each package securely with twine.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London - Then with the other end of the twine lay a loop back on the end of the rope and continue winding the twine upon this second end until all is taken up.
— from Boy Scouts Handbook by Boy Scouts of America - Once let me kiss their lips, once twine Mine arms and touch. .
— from Medea of Euripides by Euripides - "Now I think I have done with you," said Bathsheba, closing the book and shaking back a stray twine of hair.
— from Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy - you I love and praise, Because around my heart and brain you twine A misty winding-sheet and a nebulous shrine.
— from The Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire - XXIX I think of thee!—my thoughts do twine and bud XXX I see thine image through my tears to-night
— from Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
