All 10 Uses of
venerable
in
Moby Dick
- I had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable robustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon admitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation, sufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain.†
Chpt 7-9venerable = respected (worthy of respect) -- typically because of age or position
- Her venerable bows looked bearded.†
Chpt 16-18 *
- —In one respect this is the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted by man.†
Chpt 31-33
- Now, venerable priest, further into the light, and hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.†
Chpt 52-54
- "Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee.†
Chpt 70-72
- Look your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet lie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other will not be very long in following.†
Chpt 73-75
- Whether this whale belonged to the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it is not customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all social.†
Chpt 79-81
- Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone, he will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to wife in the wilderness of waters, and the best of wives she is, though she keeps so many moody secrets.†
Chpt 88-90
- Nor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity of the whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian reality, as set down by the venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller.†
Chpt 103-105
- Hadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came upon him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief, and her orphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after years; and all of them a care-killing competency.†
Chpt 112-114
Definitions:
-
(1)
(venerable) respected (worthy of respect) -- typically because of age or position
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely, venerable can be used as a specific religious title whose exact meaning depends upon the religious denomination, but when given, is only to a small number or people who are exceptionally respected and admired.