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Middlemarch vocabulary
11 archaic vocabulary words
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league
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synonyms: ~parasang ???
tags: [archaic] [unit]
► definition
Definition:unit equal to about 3 miles, originally meaning the distance somebody could walk in an hour.
► uses
Uses:
I have given some account of the island of Mayo and of other of these islands in my Voyage round the World, but I shall now add some further observations that occurred to me in this voyage. The island of Mayo is about 7 leagues in circumference, of a roundish form, with many small rocky points shooting out into the sea a mile or more.
William Dampier. A Voyage to New Holland, Etc. in the Year 1699
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This island of Luggnagg stands south-eastward of Japan, about a hundred leagues distant.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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You can tell a Parisian two leagues off.
Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace: 11 (Book Eleven) . Simon & Schuster
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she came down from under the eaves, and so homeward across the moor, there being three leagues betwixt the Hall and her father's farm.
Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
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Soon he lost his sense of distance, and his glass seemed to be a league away.
Joris-Karl Huysmans. À Rebours.
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the tunnel for the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the rope was rove to it and slowly taken through the miles of hollow to the great iron ring.
Charles Dickens. Great Expectations (1861)
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