2 meanings, 25 uses
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1 —4 uses as in:
the relative importance
Definition
compared with something else (not an absolute value or not complete)
- Of course I'm a poet, and relatively lucky.Chapter 21 (70% in)
Other Uses (with this meaning)
- He was a solid man of relatively low current in his thoughts; he took the best care of his business and wouldn't overstay downtown to an hour that would make it difficult for him to get up at his regular time, four o'clock.Chapter 2 (61% in)
- He had a long chest but his legs were relatively short; he walked quickly, toes in, slovenly in his double-breasted long jacket, a densely hairy, mild, even delicate person.Chapter 13 (10% in)
- Some pains of life were in it too, sure enough, when you looked close, though just at present her eyes were relatively clear of them.Chapter 14 (14% in)
There are no more uses of "relative" flagged with this meaning in The Adventures of Augie March.
Typical Usage
(best examples)
2 —13 uses as in:
they are relatives
Definition
connected
in various senses, including:
- a person related by blood or marriage — as in "The hospital won't let me visit her because I'm not a relative."
- a plant or animal related by origin or grouping — "The closest relative of the dog is the gray wolf."
- Holy Jesus, folks, everybody has relatives there!Chapter 3 (46% in)
Other Uses (with this meaning)
- I was sitting up in front, in the feather-trailed air, with the old lady, who was dressed up in dark silk and multiply-wound gold chains with the heart of a locket that one of her teething children had dented; she was narrow-nosed with pride, and distinguished, in a kind of fury of silent trying, from the other immigrant relatives, her double spray of feathers busy hanging in two directions.Chapter 3 (21% in)
- She didn't come down to give them a piece of her mind because it was no use fighting; they were sometimes able to get me some small job or other, through the influence of Jimmy's uncle Tambow, who delivered the vote of his relatives in the ward and was a pretty big wheel in Republican ward politics.Chapter 3 (89% in)
- The Einhorns were his ex-wife's relatives; they, however, had never taken sides in the divorce.Chapter 5 (5% in)
- Also their merits: which heavy character of fifty was a good boy, a donor, a friend, a compassionate man, a man of balls, a lucid percentage calculator, a fellow willing to make a loan of charity though he couldn't sign his name, a giver of scrolls to the synagogue, a protector of Polish relatives.Chapter 5 (55% in)
- I've never backed down from male relatives, either calf or bull, or let father and guardians discomfit me.Chapter 8 (60% in)
- "I don't want any more fucking relatives around; they get in my hair.Chapter 9 (23% in)
- These days they take care of their relatives first.Chapter 9 (41% in)
- And what have you got in the way of relatives?Chapter 9 (41% in)
- Broke, Padilla and I had supper at his house, a more empty house than the one we had just left; that at least had old carpets, old soft chairs, and doodad girls' ingenuities, whereas Padilla lived with some aged female relatives in a big railroad flat off Madison Street.Chapter 10 (66% in)
- More relatives came; the vast apartment filled.Chapter 11 (51% in)
- He also covered the city and hit his new relatives for orders; Charlie Magnus threw business his way, and little by little things began to stir.Chapter 11 (78% in)
- " "And why do you want to get mixed up with your brother's new relatives, those coarse people?Chapter 12 (99% in)
There are no more uses of "relative" flagged with this meaning in The Adventures of Augie March.
Typical Usage
(best examples)
? —8 uses
exact meaning not specified
- So now Basteshaw told me about another relative, an aunt.Chapter 25 (47% in)
- But it wasn't exactly as though I were passing into strange hands, for Anna Coblin was my mother's cousin and I was accordingly treated as a relative.Chapter 2 (16% in)
- She told the girl I had been practically a relative to her, she had loved me as much as Arthur, and received me in her own house like kin—all joy and happy reunion, she was, embracing me by the shoulders to say how fine and handsome I had become, but then my complexion had always been the envy of girls (as if I had been Achilles among the maidens, in the office and poolroom).Chapter 6 (87% in)
- He had a personality strictly relative to his business.Chapter 8 (29% in)
- He made a match for her with a relative of yours.Chapter 10 (21% in)
- Your Spanish relative.Chapter 12 (65% in)
- The large-mouthed smile she gave me, staying at her seated distance instead of coming to kiss me, was curious—that pretty sketch of charm, in lipstick, widening, the relative of the awful cleft, running the other way, of the schismatics in the sixth bulge of hell, hit open from the bottom and split through the face.Chapter 12 (90% in)
- Here was vast humankind that meshed or dug, or carried, picked up, held, that served, returning every day to its occupations, and being honest or kidding or weeping or hypocritic or mesmeric, and money, if not the secret, was anyhow beside the secret, as the secret's relative, or associate or representative before the peoples.Chapter 16 (7% in)
There are no more uses of "relative" in The Adventures of Augie March.
Typical Usage
(best examples)