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Great Expectations vocabulary
9 archaic vocabulary words
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expectations
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tags: [archaic] [britain]
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Definition:A word that in addition to its usual meaning denoted the strong likelihood of inheriting wealth from someone. This gives the titles of Dickens's great novel, of course, a double meaning.Daniel Pool. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, p.304 (1993)
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Uses:
You must know that, although I have used the term 'expectations' more than once, you are not endowed with expectations only. There is already lodged in my hands a sum of money amply sufficient for your suitable education and maintenance.
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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Fred felt that he made a wretched figure as a fellow who bragged about expectations from a queer old miser like Featherstone, and went to beg for certificates at his bidding. But—those expectations! He really had them, and he saw no agreeable alternative if he gave them up;
George Eliot. Middlemarch
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He knew the just value and only use of money, viz., to lay it up. He was likewise well skilled in the exact value of reversions, expectations, &c., and had often considered the amount of his sister's fortune, and the chance which he or his posterity had of inheriting it.
Henry Fielding. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749)
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I’m acting generously to your master: his young chit has no expectations, and should she second my wishes she’ll be provided for at once as joint successor with Linton
Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights (1847)
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The great wonder was, how Wyatt had been entrapped into such a match. Wealth was the general solution—but this I knew to be no solution at all; for Wyatt had told me that she neither brought him a dollar nor had any expectations from any source whatever.
Edgar Allan Poe. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4: The Oblong Box (1844)
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'You have heard something, I des-say, of a change in my expectations, Master Copperfield,—I should say, Mister Copperfield?' observed Uriah.
Charles Dickens. David Copperfield (1850)
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