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Gulliver’s Travels vocabulary
327 vocabulary words, including people, places, music, artists, etc.
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mercurial
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synonyms: capricious ???
► definition
Definition:1. Having the qualities fabled to belong to the god Mercury; swift; active; sprightly; fickle; volatile; changeable;2. Having the form or image of Mercury; -- applied to ancient guideposts. [Obs.]3. Of or pertaining to Mercury as the god of trade; hence, money- making; crafty.5. (Med.) Defn: Caused by the use of mercury; as, mercurial sore mouth.Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
► uses
Uses:
They are expressed in the most plain and simple terms, wherein those people are not mercurial enough to discover above one interpretation: and to write a comment upon any law, is a capital crime.
Jonathan Swift. Gulliver's Travels Into Several Remote Regions of the World (1726)
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A mercurial man Who fluttered over all things like a fan.
Byron.
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Rick: So in conclusion: you're both equally mercurial, overly sensitive, clingy, hysterical, bird-brained homunculi; and I honestly can't even tell the two of you apart half the time [...].
Adult Swim. Rick and Morty, season 2: A Rickle in Time
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In Lagos, the harmattan was a mere veil of haze, but in Nsukka, it was a raging, mercurial presence; the mornings were crisp, the afternoons ashen with heat, and the nights unknown.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Americanah, pp.112-3 (2013)
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Jack knew him to be a mercurial man, affable one moment, brittle the next.
Tom Clancy. The Hunt for Red October, p.40 (1984)
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Allnutt's mercurial spirits could hardly help rising under the influence of Rose's persistent optimism.
Cecil Scott Forester. The African Queen, p.91 (1935)
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Her mercurial spirits rose again.
Arnold Bennett. The Grand Babylon Hôtel (1902)
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I knew't by certain spots, too, in his teeth,
And on the nail of his mercurial finger.
FACE. Which finger's that?
SUB. His little finger. Look.
Ben Jonson. The Alchemist (1610)
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