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Les Misérables vocabulary
10 outdated vocabulary words
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valetudinarian
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tags: [dated]
► definition
Definition:1. an invalid2. a hypochondriac
► uses
Uses:
Its communication with the Baths, is through the yard of an inn, where the poor trembling valetudinarian is carried in a chair, betwixt the heels of a double row of horses,
Tobias Smollett. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771)
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Such an animal as the self-observing valetudinarian I know there is; I have met him myself occasionally, and I know that he is the worst imaginable heautontimoroumenos**; aggravating and sustaining, by calling into distinct consciousness, every symptom that would else perhaps, under a different direction given to the thoughts, become evanescent.
Thomas De Quincey. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821)
**heautontimoroumenos - self tormentor (a play)
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Hence, though they conceal ill health by every cunning and hypocrisy and artifice which they can devise, they are quite open about the most flagrant mental diseases, should they happen to exist, which to do the people justice is not often. Indeed, there are some who are, so to speak, spiritual valetudinarians, and who make themselves exceedingly ridiculous by their nervous supposition that they are wicked, while they are very tolerable people all the time.
Samuel Butler. Erewhon
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I never write 'valetudinarian' at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents;
Mark Twain's Speeches
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forty-year-old valetudinarian in velvet coat sitting beside her
Vladimir Nabokov. Lolita
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