Questions tagged [late-modern-english]
For questions about English from the Late Modern English period (1700-1900).
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The meaning of “but knew it”
The full phrase is:
There was not one in all that assemblage but knew it.
This is from a book first published in 1906
My instinct is that it means “everyone in the assemblage knew”.
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4
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Meaning of "so to"
The following is from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; do you know what the "so to" means? It seems to mean "so as to" or "in order to", but I am not even sure if it is a ...
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behind or ahead?
The following is an extract from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I'm wondering whether the word "behind" is equal to "ahead" in 21st-century English in this context.
Justine died; ...
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2
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yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted
The following is from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I'm wondering whether the boldfaced part is likely to have been "would we be":
Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life ...
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Greece had not been enslaved
The following is an extract from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Is the "had not been" correct? Should it have been "would not have been"?
"A human being in perfection ought ...
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become as well acquainted . . . as depended on
The following is an extract from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I'd like to know whether the use of "as well . . . as" is natural in current English and what it means here.
When I had ...
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0
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0
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those higher virtues of which, rendered without, one verily may sag
The following sentence is from Lincoln in the Bardo, an experimental novel published in 2017. As an imitation of 19th-century English, is it crafted properly?
I did always try, in all my aspects, to ...
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3
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Does "were carried" have a passive structure, or is "carried" simply an adjective in this text?
At Hit the rolling Assyrian plain had come to an end, and the invading army had entered upon the low alluvium of Babylonia, a region of great fertility, intersected by numerous canals, which in some ...
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detail or detailing
In the following extract from Frankenstein, which of the two possibilities do you think makes more sense?
and although I loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds, yet I ...
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returned to my old habits
The following is an extract from Frankenstein. What does the "habits" in "returned to my old habits" mean? It does not seem to refer to habits like drinking, staying up late, etc. ...
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