Literary notes about opposite (AI summary)
Writers employ the word "opposite" in diverse ways to enrich both the physical and abstract layers of their narratives. It frequently designates a precise spatial relationship, as when characters face one another across a table or street ([1], [2], [3]), or when geographic details are marked by position, such as an island lying directly across a coast ([4], [5]). At the same time, "opposite" is used to signal conceptual or thematic contrasts, highlighting divergent qualities or counterbalancing forces in philosophical reflections ([6], [7], [8]). Authors also deploy the term to stress reversals or contrasts in events and ideas—from the literal pulling in divergent directions in mechanical descriptions ([9], [10]) to the more nuanced presentation of opposing personality traits or outcomes ([11], [12]). This versatility makes the word a potent literary device for mapping relationships, whether physical, intellectual, or emotional.
- He laughed and looked across at the tall girl who sat opposite, with an unusually mild expression in her face.
— from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - I consoled myself with the thought that there were other people in the carriage—there was quite a nice-looking man and his wife sitting just opposite.
— from The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie - Elizabeth, at work in the opposite corner, saw it all with great delight.
— from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - Opposite to this coast is the island called Britannia, so celebrated in the records of Greece 2929 and of our own country.
— from The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 1 (of 6) by the Elder Pliny - The spot, which is just opposite the battlefield of Chiliánwála, was visited (15th December, 1868) at my request, by my friend Colonel R. Maclagan,
— from The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 by Marco Polo and da Pisa Rusticiano - Not as its opposite, but—as its refinement!
— from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - “I feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more natural it seems to me.”
— from Anna Karenina by graf Leo Tolstoy - He was the first person who asserted that in every question there were two sides to the argument exactly opposite to one another.
— from The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius - They both get hold of the same bit of line, and pull at it in opposite directions, and wonder where it is caught.
— from Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome - for every action there is a reaction equal in force and opposite in direction [Newton].
— from Roget's Thesaurus by Peter Mark Roget - Porthos, as we have seen, had a character exactly opposite to that of Athos.
— from The three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - How can that young lady see her brother so universally admired for his manners and deportment, and yet be so unamiably opposite to him in hers!
— from Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney
