2 meanings, 24 uses
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1 —1 use as in:
compose a poem
Definition
to write or create something with care — especially music or a literary work, but could be other things as diverse as a plan or a letter
- No more wonderful critical schools of experts to determine rationally where each composer had succeeded or failed.Part 3 (19% in)
There are no more uses of "compose" flagged with this meaning in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Typical Usage
(best examples)
2 —2 uses as in:
keep your composure
Definition
to calm someone or settle something
- He begins to recover his composure.Part 4 (72% in)
- "Stop!" says the Chairman, who has now completely recovered his composure.Part 4 (72% in)
There are no more uses of "compose" flagged with this meaning in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Typical Usage
(best examples)
? —21 uses
exact meaning not specified
- Now everyone's face becomes carefully composed in defense against more of this sort of questioning.Part 4 (41% in)
- I say for the sake of convenience that I've money in the bank and say for the sake of convenience that substances compose the cycle I'm riding on.Part 2 (45% in)
- He was an ancient Greek — a rhetorician — a 'composition major' of his time.Part 2 (86% in)
- He used the demonstrator to avoid talking in terms of principles of composition, all of which he had deep doubts about.Part 3 (5% in)
- He had selected two examples of student composition.Part 3 (14% in)
- Outlines and footnotes are standard things taught in all freshman composition classes, but now as devices for improving Quality they had a purpose.Part 3 (15% in)
- He wrote: "(1) Every instructor of English composition knows what quality is.Part 3 (19% in)
- This "something else" opened up into a huge area of classic scientific belief which stated that "what you like" is unimportant because it's all composed of irrational emotions within yourself.Part 3 (33% in)
- Scientific materialism, which is commoner among lay followers of science than among scientists themselves, holds that what is composed of matter or energy and is measurable by the instruments of science is real.Part 3 (34% in)
- Let's examine, he said, what follows from the premise that anything not composed of mass...energy is unreal or unimportant.Part 3 (34% in)
- It was way too tedious and difficult for a course in freshman composition.Part 3 (35% in)
- Classroom popularity contests could determine whether a composition had immediate appeal, all right, but was this Quality?Part 3 (35% in)
- The world now, according to Phaedrus, was composed of three things: mind, matter, and Quality.Part 3 (37% in)
- I keep my face composed so that he sees no change of expression in it, then carefully get up and go over and methodically turn the socks on the rock.Part 3 (40% in)
- This, he said, explains why a classful of freshman composition students arrives at similar ratings of Quality in the compositions.Part 3 (44% in)
- This, he said, explains why a classful of freshman composition students arrives at similar ratings of Quality in the compositions.Part 3 (44% in)
- And he knew from his experience with philosophy that further study there was unlikely to uncover anything concerning an apparently mystic term in English composition.Part 4 (7% in)
- Phaedrus said, "English composition."Part 4 (9% in)
- In technical composition a similar distinction exists between physical description and functional description.Part 4 (10% in)
- But to apply these classifications to a whole field of knowledge such as English composition seemed arbitrary and impractical.Part 4 (10% in)
- Phaedrus' provocation informed the Chairman that his substantive field was now philosophy, not English composition.Part 4 (18% in)
There are no more uses of "compose" in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Typical Usage
(best examples)