Both Uses of
fluent
in
Nine Stories
- There were twenty-five Comanches in the Club, or twenty-five legitimate living descendants of the Laughing Man—all of us circulating ominously, and incognito, throughout the city, sizing up elevator operators as potential archenemies, whispering side-of-the-mouth but fluent orders into the ears of cocker spaniels, drawing beads, with index fingers, on the foreheads of arithmetic teachers.†
Story 4
- Candidate instructors, it stipulated, were to have a fluent knowledge of both the French and English languages, and only those of temperate habits and unquestionable character need apply.†
Story 8 *
Definitions:
-
(1)
(fluent) able to easily comprehend and express; or expressed smoothly -- especially in a foreign language
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely (seen in classic literature), fluent can mean smooth or flowing -- as in: "fluent as the flight of a swallow" or "the fluent lines on the yacht" or Shakespeare's "fluent as the sea".