All 30 Uses of
profound
in
Moby Dick
- These reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that after we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some good stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every man maintained a profound silence.†
Chpt 4-6 (definition 2)
- ...a profound desire to learn...
Chpt 10-12 (definition 1) *profound = intense
- At last, stepping on board the Pequod, we found everything in profound quiet, not a soul moving.†
Chpt 19-21 (definition 2)
- The profoundest slumber slept upon him.†
Chpt 19-21 (definition 2)
- But, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it unwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding adoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn round the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!†
Chpt 22-24 (definition 2)
- Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested the then fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete.†
Chpt 31-33 (definition 2)
- —Another retiring gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along the Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings.†
Chpt 31-33 (definition 2)
- For, like the Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor profoundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals were somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; and yet at table old Ahab forbade not conversation; only he himself was dumb.†
Chpt 34-36 (definition 1)
- "azimuth compass observations," and "approximate errors," he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was not so much immersed in those profound magnetic meditations, as to fail being attracted occasionally towards that well replenished little case-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of his crow's nest, within easy reach of his hand.†
Chpt 34-36 (definition 2)
- But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.†
Chpt 40-42 (definition 2)
- Therefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious thing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest idealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.†
Chpt 40-42 (definition 2)
- …one or two very interesting and curious particulars in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in its earlier part, is as important a one as will be found in this volume; but the leading matter of it requires to be still further and more familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be adequately understood, and moreover to take away any incredulity which a profound ignorance of the entire subject may induce in some minds, as to the natural verity of the main points of this affair.†
Chpt 43-45 (definition 2)
- …eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless bowling-green; the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip for an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost seemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the watery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the top of the opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other side;—all these, with the cries of the headsmen and harpooneers, and the shuddering…†
Chpt 46-48 (definition 2)
- But one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost preternatural spread over the sea, however unattended with any stagnant calm; when the long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed a golden finger laid across them, enjoining some secrecy; when the slippered waves whispered together as they softly ran on; in this profound hush of the visible sphere a strange spectre was seen by Daggoo from the main-mast-head.†
Chpt 58-60 (definition 2)
- Again: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and prophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself; for, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and contains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal powder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play—this is a thing which carries more of true terror than…†
Chpt 58-60 (definition 2)
- The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this side, and another distinct picture on that side; while all between must be profound darkness and nothingness to him.†
Chpt 73-75 (definition 2)
- But if you now come to separate these two objects, and surround each by a circle of profound darkness; then, in order to see one of them, in such a manner as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other will be utterly excluded from your contemporary consciousness.†
Chpt 73-75 (definition 2)
- If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of the Sperm Whale's brow?†
Chpt 79-81 (definition 2)
- …hand; but in his broken lingo, the German soon evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately turning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some remarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at night in profound darkness—his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and not a single flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency; concluding by hinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is technically called a CLEAN one (that is, an empty…†
Chpt 79-81 (definition 2)
- Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living.†
Chpt 85-87 (definition 2)
- He is both ponderous and profound.†
Chpt 85-87 (definition 2)
- And I am convinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as Plato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes up a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep thoughts.†
Chpt 85-87 (definition 2)
- For according to King Juba, the military elephants of antiquity often hailed the morning with their trunks uplifted in the profoundest silence.†
Chpt 85-87 (definition 2)
- It is a place also for profound mathematical meditation.†
Chpt 94-96 (definition 2)
- ...many profound thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic application;
Chpt 100-102 (definition 2) *profound = deep and far-reaching
- No. Only in the heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his angry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully invested whale be truly and livingly found out.†
Chpt 103-105 (definition 2)
- At that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness, following the flashes, a voice was heard at his side; and almost at the same instant a volley of thunder peals rolled overhead.†
Chpt 118-120 (definition 2)
- Long maintaining an enchanted silence, Ahab stood apart; and every time the tetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he turned to eye the bright sun's rays produced ahead; and when she profoundly settled by the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun's rearward place, and how the same yellow rays were blending with his undeviating wake.†
Chpt 124-126 (definition 1)
- But suddenly as he peered down and down into its depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a white weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it rose, till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long crooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the undiscoverable bottom.†
Chpt 133-135 (definition 1)
- The boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the mast-heads—a downward pointed arm, Ahab knew that the whale had sounded; but intending to be near him at the next rising, he held on his way a little sideways from the vessel; the becharmed crew maintaining the profoundest silence, as the head-beat waves hammered and hammered against the opposing bow.†
Chpt 133-135 (definition 2)
Definitions:
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(1) (profound as in: profound sadness) of greatest intensity or emotional depth
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(2) (profound as in: profound idea) deep or far-reaching in intellect or consequence