Literary notes about unmitigated (AI summary)
In literature, the word "unmitigated" functions as a powerful intensifier, employed to depict a condition or quality in its most absolute, unadulterated form. Authors use it to emphasize the totality of a negative trait—as seen when a character is simply described as an "unmitigated scoundrel" [1] or a situation as "unmitigated misery" [2]—but it also lends a stark clarity to otherwise ambiguous states of being. Whether characterizing a person’s inherent wickedness [3, 4], the bleakness of an environment [5, 6], or the intensity of emotion [7, 8], its deployment leaves little room for nuance, reinforcing the idea that what is being described is utterly devoid of any mitigating elements.
- “He seemed to be such an unmitigated scoundrel when we first made his acquaintance that it is difficult to believe he is a changed man now.”
— from Life in the Red Brigade: London Fire Brigade by R. M. (Robert Michael) Ballantyne - Whenever death is referred to in the literature, it is described as an unmitigated evil.
— from The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria by Morris Jastrow - And I still believe that Herbert Spencer is a great and noble man and that Judge Blount is an unmitigated ass.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London - “Well, of all the ridiculous, unmitigated greenhorns !”
— from The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, August, 1913Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913 by Various - Then the plains become unmitigated desert.
— from Lodges in the Wilderness by W. C. (William Charles) Scully - The weather was intensely hot, the sun struck down with unmitigated fury on our heads, and in a few days seven cases of fever appeared on board.
— from Hurricane Hurry by William Henry Giles Kingston - I would not challenge Mr. Swinburne's statement that we pity Othello even more than Desdemona; but we watch Desdemona with more unmitigated distress.
— from Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth by A. C. Bradley - What he dreaded above all was meeting that man again; he hated him with an intense, unmitigated hatred and was afraid his hatred might betray him.
— from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
