All 3 Uses of
lurid
in
Moby Dick
- For in his eyes I read some lurid woe would shrivel me up, had I it.†
Chpt 37-39 *
- Our captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, there's another in the sky—lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.†
Chpt 40-42
- But Pip loved life, and all life's peaceable securities; so that the panic-striking business in which he had somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had most sadly blurred his brightness; though, as ere long will be seen, what was thus temporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to be luridly illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him off to ten times the natural lustre with which in his native Tolland County in Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler's frolic on the green; and at melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha!†
Chpt 91-93luridly = shocking
Definitions:
-
(1)
(lurid) shocking, as from disturbing details of a horrible story, or a color more vivid (bright or deep) than would be expected
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Long ago, lurid referred to a yellowish color or things and from there to things so shocking they make someone turn pale. Later, but still in the 18th century, it was used to describe a vivid red and is still used to describe vivid colors--especially red.