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Literary notes about untimely (AI summary)

The adjective “untimely” has long been employed in literature to evoke the shock and sorrow of events occurring far earlier or in a manner unexpected by nature or fate. Classical epics, such as Homer's works, use the term to signify the premature fall of heroes and the disruption of natural order—as in the sudden death of warriors and even the scattering of seed before its season ([1], [2], [3], [4]). In Romantic and Gothic texts, “untimely” often intensifies the tragedy of loss, whether it be the sorrow over a life cut short ([5], [6], [7]) or the metaphorical depiction of nature’s harsh intervention, like an untimely frost ravaging a tender bloom ([8]). Moreover, writers sometimes juxtapose “untimely” with synonyms such as “unseasonable” or “timeless” to underscore the anomaly of these events ([9], [10], [11]), thereby imbuing the term with a rich, layered significance that reflects both the inevitability of fate and the poignant disruption of the natural course of life.
  1. Next artful Phereclus untimely fell; Bold Merion sent him to the realms of hell.
    — from The Iliad by Homer
  2. Among my treasures, still adorns my board: For Tydeus left me young, when Thebe's wall Beheld the sons of Greece untimely fall.)
    — from The Iliad by Homer
  3. Twelve in the tumult wedged, untimely rush'd On their own spears, by their own chariots crush'd:
    — from The Iliad by Homer
  4. ordain'd To fall untimely in a foreign land.
    — from The Iliad by Homer
  5. Who that had seen him bright and joyous in his young beauty, but must weep over his untimely loss!
    — from Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
  6. X. Amidst all these favourable circumstances, he was cut off by an untimely death, more to the loss of mankind than himself.
    — from The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete by Suetonius
  7. Here's old Peter Stimson, who has 'left a large circle of friends to mourn his untimely loss.'
    — from Anne's House of Dreams by L. M. Montgomery
  8. Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
    — from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
  9. TIMELESS, untimely, unseasonable.
    — from The Alchemist by Ben Jonson
  10. UNTIMELY, unseasonably.
    — from The Alchemist by Ben Jonson
  11. UNTIMELY, unseasonably.
    — from Every Man in His Humor by Ben Jonson

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