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Literary notes about highly (AI summary)

In literature, the adverb "highly" is frequently employed as an intensifier that reinforces qualities, evaluations, or conditions. It enhances adjectives to denote an extreme degree, such as in Darwin's “highly improbable suppositions” [1] or Tacitus’s account of figures so “highly esteemed” that even legal penalties were tripled [2]. Authors use it both to elevate praise—as seen when a gentleman is described as “highly bred” [3] or a critic as “highly gifted” [4]—and to underscore disapproval or exceptional states, like “highly inappropriate” behavior [5] or a “highly satisfactory” condition of health [6]. The versatility of “highly” allows writers across genres and eras—from Coleridge to Dostoyevsky—to subtly color descriptions, mark extreme conditions, or emphasize value judgments, thus serving as an essential tool in literary expression [7][8].
  1. But if we deny this, we must make one of the two following highly improbable suppositions.
    — from On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin
  2. So highly were they esteemed in Germany, that for killing or hurting them a fine was exacted treble to that for other freemen.
    — from The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus by Cornelius Tacitus
  3. Above all, the fine suffusion through the whole, with the characteristic manners and feelings, of a highly bred gentleman gives life to the drama.
    — from Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  4. It surprises me to find that such an idea has crossed the mind of any one, especially of a highly gifted critic.
    — from The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
  5. This was highly improper and very ungentlemanlike on your part!
    — from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
  6. All in all, we enjoyed a highly satisfactory state of health.
    — from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne
  7. The general valued the proposal very highly.
    — from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  8. But there were many things against this hypothesis, highly interesting as it was to my vanity.
    — from Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

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