Literary notes about allay (AI summary)
The word "allay" has been used in literature to connote the act of soothing or diminishing discomfort, fear, or disturbance, whether physical or emotional. In medicinal texts, it literally eases physical pain, as seen when Tavera describes its use in alleviating toothache ([1]). In more dramatic narratives, authors employ "allay" to pacify natural phenomena, such as calming tumultuous waves or tempests, exemplified by Shelley and Montaigne ([2], [3]). The term also frequently appears in contexts of emotional or psychological relief—from quieting terror in Frazer's account ([4]) and easing acute suspicions in Doyle's detective work ([5]) to mitigating internal turmoil, as in Poe's reflective prose ([6]). Poets and writers like Homer, Tagore, and Goethe similarly use "allay" to convey the diminishing of hunger, thirst, or burning passions, underscoring the word's versatile capacity to describe both physical and metaphorical soothing across genres ([7], [8], [9]).
- The decoction of the leaves of this species as well as the former is used to allay toothache.
— from The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines by T. H. Pardo de Tavera - It fell to my lot, to come as the influential power, to allay the fierce tossing of these tumultuous waves.
— from The Last Man by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - O Pythagoras, why didst not thou allay this tempest?
— from Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete by Michel de Montaigne - The man would probably have died of fright if a missionary had not been at hand to allay his terror.
— from The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion by James George Frazer - He had to pretend to be drunk in order to allay the suspicions which might have been aroused by his appearance at the gate.
— from A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle - We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - Oh! in his dearest blood might I allay My rage, and these barbarities repay!
— from The Iliad by Homer - And, alas, our spring is not here to allay your thirst.
— from The gardener by Rabindranath Tagore - Often do I strive to allay the burning fever of my blood; and you have never witnessed anything so unsteady, so uncertain, as my heart.
— from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
