Jane Eyre vocabulary

with lesson-books to be conned; emblems of a past that had sunk down and well-nigh vanished under the earth

Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volume 1]

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wait, and you shall hear if he conned his A B C to please me; and if it were worth while being civil to the brute.

Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights (1847)

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it is true that when he used a Greek or Latin phrase he always gave the English with scrupulous care, but he would probably have done this in any case. A learned provincial clergyman is accustomed to think of his acquaintances as of "lords, knyghtes, and other noble and worthi men, that conne Latyn but lytille."

George Eliot. Middlemarch.

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I sat there, sturdily conning my books, until dinner-time (we were out of school for good at three); and went down, hopeful of becoming a passable sort of boy yet.

Charles Dickens. David Copperfield (1850)

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It was the hour of study; they were engaged in conning over their to-morrow’s task, and the hum I had heard was the combined result of their whispered repetitions.

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For Cassius is aweary of the world;

Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother;

Checked like a bondman; all his faults observed,

Set in a notebook, learned, and conned by rote,

To cast into my teeth.