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Middlemarch vocabulary
18 outdated vocabulary words
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keep counsel
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tags: [dated] [idiom]
► definition
Definition:to keep a secretChambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (1908)---to keep one's thoughts, purposes, etc., undisclosed.Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
► uses
Uses:
in love nothing is so dangerous as to participate the means thereof to another, and that two may keep counsel if one be away,
John Lyly. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578)
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‘I’m not in her confidence,’ returned I, reluctant to continue the subject.
‘No, she’s a sly one,’ he remarked, shaking his head. ‘She keeps her own counsel! But she’s a real little fool.
Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights (1847)
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We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot keep counsel; they'll tell all.
William Shakespeare. Hamlet
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Standish will keep our counsel, and the news will be old before it's known.George Eliot. Middlemarch
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I visualize his shoes, black, well shined, impenetrable, keeping their own counsel.
Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale (1986)
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