All 17 Uses
grave
in
Catch-22
(Auto-generated)
- I may be committing a very grave error.
Chpt 1 *grave = serious and solemn
- He hesitated gravely.†
Chpt 14gravely = in a serious and solemn manner
- 'Is he?' teased the unregenerate old man, pinching his pointy jaw gravely in a parody of repentance.†
Chpt 23
- Milo nodded with spurious vim to indicate he still understood and then sat silent, ruminating gravely with troubled misgiving.†
Chpt 24
- Men in uniform were screaming and running there too, or standing motionless in one spot, rooted in awe, like Sergeant Knight and Doc Daneeka as they gravely craned their heads upward and watched the guilty, banking, forlorn airplane with McWatt circle and circle slowly and climb.†
Chpt 30
Uses with a meaning too common or too rare to warrant foucs:
- Nately, sitting trancelike on the floor of the truck, held his grave young face in both hands and did not answer him.†
Chpt 12 *
- Major — de Coverley was a splendid, awe-inspiring, grave old man with a massive leonine head and an angry shock of wild white hair that raged like a blizzard around his stern, patriarchal face.†
Chpt 13
- The colonel was still in grave peril.†
Chpt 21
- Milo gulped back a moan as he saw six uniformed pallbearers lift the plain pine coffin from the ambulance and set it gently down on the ground beside the yawning gash of the freshly dug grave.†
Chpt 24
- The four men in fatigues lifted the coffin on slings and lowered it into the grave.†
Chpt 24
- Yossarian suggested casually, as he watched the four men in streaked fatigues shoveling heaping bladefuls of the copper-red earth back down inside the grave.†
Chpt 24
- To simulate gravity, feign grief and pretend supernatural intelligence of the hereafter in so fearsome and arcane a circumstance as death seemed the most criminal of offenses.†
Chpt 25
- They were indeed sending everyone overseas, even Lieutenant Scheisskopf, who had resisted the move with all the vigor and wisdom at his command and who reported for duty at General Peckem's office in a mood of grave discontent.†
Chpt 29
- Yossarian, blazing with rage and almost sobbing for revenge, hurled himself down into the crawlway and fought his way through against the dragging weight of gravity and inertia until he arrived at the main section and pulled himself up to the flight deck, to stand trembling behind McWatt in the pilot's seat.†
Chpt 30
- You know, just to keep that kid Nately's body spinning in his grave, ha, ha!†
Chpt 38
- He circled on tiptoe the grotesque debris and came near a doorway containing a crying soldier holding a saturated handkerchief to his mouth, supported as he sagged by two other soldiers waiting in grave impatience for the military ambulance that finally came clanging up with amber fog lights on and passed them by for an altercation on the next block between a civilian Italian with books and a slew of civilian policemen with armlocks and clubs.†
Chpt 39
- Yossarian smiled wryly at the futile and ridiculous cry for aid, then saw with a start that the words were ambiguous, realized with alarm that they were not, perhaps, intended as a call for police but as a heroic warning from the grave by a doomed friend to everyone who was not a policeman with a club and a gun and a mob of other policemen with clubs and guns to back him up.†
Chpt 39
Definitions:
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(1)
(grave as in: Her manner was grave.) serious and/or solemnThe exact meaning of this sense of grave can depend upon its context. For example:
- "This is a grave problem," or "a situation of the utmost gravity." -- important, dangerous, or causing worry
- "She was in a grave mood upon returning from the funeral." -- sad or solemn
- "She looked me in the eye and gravely promised." -- in a sincere and serious manner
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(2)
(meaning too common or too rare to warrant focus) Better known meanings of grave and gravity:Less common meanings of grave:
- grave -- a place where a dead body is buried
- gravity -- in the sense of physics to refer to the force of attraction between all masses in the universe--especially the force that causes things to fall toward the earth
- death -- as in "A message from beyond the grave."
- describing a color as dark
- to sculpt with a chisel
- to clean and coat the bottom of a wooden ship with pitch
- grave accent -- a punctuation mark (`) that is used in some non-English languages, and that is placed over some letters of the alphabet to tell how they are pronounced.
- grave musical direction -- in a slow and solemn manner