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Middlemarch vocabulary
551 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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edify
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► definition
Definition:to instruct and improve moral/intellectual knowledge
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Uses:
"But is there capital punishment where you were?" asked Adelaida.
"I saw it at Lyons.[...]"
"Well, and did you like it very much? Was it very edifying and instructive?" asked Aglaya.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Idiot (1887)
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On waking in the morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details of Count Bezukhov’s death. She said the count had died as she would herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but edifying.
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: With bonus material from Give War and Peace A Chance by Andrew D. Kaufman
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certain periods of history quickly become, both for other societies and for those that follow them, the stuff of not especially edifying legend and the occasion for a good deal of hypocritical self-congratulation.
Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale (1986)
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The sound of our pens going refreshed us exceedingly, insomuch that I sometimes found it difficult to distinguish between this edifying business proceeding and actually paying the money. In point of meritorious character, the two things seemed about equal.
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude under temporary privation.
Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre (1847)
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By this thou shalt be able to instruct those that be weak, to confute those that be obstinate, to confound those that be erroneous, to confirm the faithful, to comfort the desperate, to cut off the presumptuous, to save thine own soul by thy sure faith, and edify the hearts of many by thy sound doctrine.
John Lyly. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578)
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ANA. I have not edified more, truly, by man;
Not since the beautiful light first shone on me:
And I am sad my zeal hath so offended.
Ben Jonson. The Alchemist (1610)
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Parsons, his attention caught by the trumpet call, sat listening with a sort of gaping solemnity, a sort of edified boredom.
George Orwell. 1984 (1949)
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