All 11 Uses of
tradition
in
Moby Dick
- Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the red-men.†
Chpt 13-15 *traditional = relating to practice or belief that is long-established or was previously long-established OR relating to stories passed down through generations
- And when these things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force, with a globular brain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillness and seclusion of many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and beneath constellations never seen here at the north, been led to think untraditionally and independently; receiving all nature's sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and confiding breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from accidental advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language—that man makes one in a whole nation's census—a mighty pageant creature, formed for noble tragedies.†
Chpt 16-18untraditionally = not the manner in which things have generally been done in the paststandard prefix: The prefix "un-" in untraditionally means not and reverses the meaning of traditionally. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
- Nevertheless, the old sea-traditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly invested this old Manxman with preternatural powers of discernment.†
Chpt 28-30traditions = long-established or previously long-established practices or beliefs
- In old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were fabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale.†
Chpt 28-30
- As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns.†
Chpt 40-42traditions = long-established or previously long-established practices or beliefs
- Most famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of the White Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger, large-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a thousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage.†
Chpt 40-42
- Or what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and kings (which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White Tower of London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an untravelled American, than those other storied structures, its neighbors—the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody?†
Chpt 40-42
- There's your law of precedents; there's your utility of traditions; there's the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the air!†
Chpt 67-69
- But then there were some sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale, and Arion and the dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that.†
Chpt 82-84
- But then there were some sceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans of their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale, and Arion and the dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did not make those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that.†
Chpt 82-84
- here, far water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe; in these most candid and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks furnish tablets; where for long Chinese ages, the billows have still rolled on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the Niger's unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith; but see!†
Chpt 115-117
Definition:
a long-established or previously long-established practice or belief
and/or:
one or more practices, beliefs, or stories passed down through generations within a specific culture or group
and/or:
one or more practices, beliefs, or stories passed down through generations within a specific culture or group