All 6 Uses of
transgress
in
The Scarlet Letter
- Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold.†
p. 48.1 *transgressor = someone who violates a rule, promise, or social norm
- The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of the English Church, had a long established and legitimate taste for all good and comfortable things, and however stern he might show himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions as that of Hester Prynne, still, the genial benevolence of his private life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his professional contemporaries.†
p. 101.0transgressions = acts that violate rules, promises, or social norms
- The earliest riser, coming forth in the dim twilight, would perceive a vaguely-defined figure aloft on the place of shame; and half-crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go knocking from door to door, summoning all the people to behold the ghost—as he needs must think it—of some defunct transgressor.†
p. 140.2transgressor = someone who violates a rule, promise, or social norm
- The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws; although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them.†
p. 187.1transgressed = violated a rule, promise, or social norm
- They transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them.†
p. 217.3
- "Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's mercy!" cried the Reverend Mr. Wilson, more harshly than before.†
p. 64.5
Definitions:
-
(1)
(transgress) to violate a rule, promise, or social norm
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely (and archaically), transgress can mean: "spread over land, especially along a subsiding shoreline" as in "The sea transgresses along the West coast of the island."