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| a calculus or concretion found in the stomach or intestines of certain animals, esp. ruminants, formerly reputed to be an effective remedy for poison. |
| a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question. |
| pathetic fallacy | |
| —n | |
| (in literature) the presentation of inanimate objects in nature as possessing human feelings | |
pathetic fallacy
poetic practice of attributing human emotion or responses to nature, inanimate objects, or animals. The practice is a form of personification that is as old as poetry, in which it has always been common to find smiling or dancing flowers, angry or cruel winds, brooding mountains, moping owls, or happy larks. The term was coined by John Ruskin in Modern Painters (1843-60). In some classical poetic forms such as the pastoral elegy, the pathetic fallacy is actually a required convention. In Milton's "On The Morning of Christ's Nativity," all aspects of nature react affectively to the event of Christ's birth.The Stars with deep amazeStand fixt in steadfast gaze
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