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Les Misérables vocabulary
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obverse
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► definition
Definition:2. Anything necessarily involved in, or answering to, another;1. The face of a coin which has the principal image or inscription upon it; -- the other side being the reverse.the more apparent or conspicuous of two possible sides, or of two corresponding things.Noah Webster. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (1913)
► uses
Uses:
[The angel coin was so called from the figure of the Archangel Michael in conflict with the dragon on the obverse. On the reverse was a representation of a ship with a large cross as a mast. The last angel coined was in Charles I.'s reign, and the value varied from 6s. 8d. to 10s.]
The Diary of Samuel Pepys (footnote)
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The fact that it [a belief] invariably exists being the obverse of the fact that there is no alternative belief.
Herbert Spencer.
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it was becoming more and more Glennard’s opinion that brains, in a woman, should be merely the obverse of beauty.
Edith Wharton. The Touchstone
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I see the two of us, a blue shape, a red shape, in the brief glass eye of the mirror as we descend. Myself, my obverse.
Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale (1986)
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"Delgado was one of those scientists who faced death - or so it seemed to other people - by using themselves as guinea pigs to test their discoveries."[...]
I'm not mentioning this so you'll admire their courage," he was saying. "in fact, it's quite the - well, not the opposite, but the obverse, I suppose is the word. [...]"Tom Wolfe. I am Charlotte Simmons, p.390 (2004)
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of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.
Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?
James Joyce. Ulysses
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