All 7 Uses
oblige
in
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
(Edited)
- And Sethe would oblige her with anything from fabric to her own tongue.
Part 1 *oblige = grant a favor
- He felt obliged to try again, slower this time, but the appetite was gone.
Part 1obliged = required (to do something)
- Sethe was badly dressed for the heat, but this being her first social outing in eighteen years, she felt obliged to wear her one good dress, heavy as it was, and a hat.
Part 1
- She hoped Paul D wouldn't take it upon himself to come looking for her and be obliged to see her squatting in front of her own privy making a mudhole too deep to be witnessed without shame.
Part 1
- All the while Denver was obliged to talk about what they were doing--the how and why of it.
Part 1
- Perhaps it was the smile, or maybe the ever-ready love she saw in his eyes--easy and upfront, the way colts, evangelists and children look at you: with love you don't have to deserve--that made her go ahead and tell him what she had not told Baby Suggs, the only person she felt obliged to explain anything to.
Part 1 *
- The colored population of Cincinnati had two graveyards and six churches, but since no school or hospital was obliged to serve them, they learned and died at home.
Part 3
Definitions:
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(1)
(oblige as in: I am obliged by law.) require (obligate) to do something
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(2)
(oblige as in: I obliged her every request.) grant a favor to someone
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(3)
(obliged as in: I'm much obliged for your kindness) grateful or indebted
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(4)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Much more rarely, in classic literature you may see oblige as a synonym for ask as when Jules Verne wrote "I obliged the Professor to move his lamp over the walls of the gallery," in Journey to the Center of the Earth.