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1984 vocabulary
189 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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palimpsest
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► definition
Definition:1. a piece of vellum (or other surface) scraped clean for reuse, but still retaiining traces of the original work2. a manuscript or other artwork that shows obvious influences from earlier works
image of reused vellum: Codex Guelferbytanus, 10th century text over 6th century effaced writing.
► uses
Uses:
Probably [Moliere's George Dandin] was a rapid palimpsest on the ground of one of his old farces, but the addition of these typical members of a county family, the De Sotenville, raises the work from farce to satiric comedy.
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
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All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was necessary.
George Orwell. 1984 (1949)
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Dances would have been held there; the music lingered, a palimpsest of unheard sound, style upon style, an undercurrent of drums,
Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale (1986)
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But man, even to himself, is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and another beneath the lines.
Thomas Hardy. Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)
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like that scholarly swindler who devoted to the fabrication of forged palimpsests a wealth of skill and knowledge and industry the hundredth part of which would have sufficed to establish him in a more lucrative — but an honourable occupation
Marcel Proust. In Search of Lost Time [volume 1] Swann’s Way
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