10 uses
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Definition
relating to a surface rather than to anything deep or penetrating (often of injuries or thinking)
- He had been here for three weeks, and so he felt compelled to write a letter home and inform his uncle, however superficially for now, of how things stood.5.1 - Eternal Soup and Sudden Clarity (26% in)
- Resembled" was not the right word—they were the same eyes; and the breadth of the upper half of the face, the flattened nose, everything, including the flush of the white skin, the healthy color of the cheeks—which in Frau Chauchat's case only feigned health and as with all the people up here was merely the superficial by-product of rest cures in the open air—it was all exactly like Pribislav, who had looked no different when they had passed one another in the schoolyard.4.9 - Growing Anxiety / Two Grandfathers and a Twilight Boat Ride (27% in)
- Only the gentian and stubby meadow crocus were still in bloom, and they attested to a freshness hidden within the superficially heated air, a chill that could suddenly go straight to the bone as you lay there singed by the sun, like an icy shiver in the midst of fever.5.4 - Mercury's Moods (11% in)
- Yes—no—only superficially, the way one knows people here.5.6 - Humaniora (38% in)
- But she swore that she had been infected only temporarily, very slightly and superficially, for just a brief time as a young girl.5.8 - Danse Macabre (45% in)
- These rabbits and dyed eggs remind me of life on a great steamer, when for weeks on end you stare at an empty horizon and a briny desert, under conditions of deluxe comfort that only superficially help you forget the enormity of the situation, an awareness of which lives on as a secret horror gnawing in the deeper regions of your mind.6.1 - Changes (48% in)
- To be sure, just as Herr Settembrini had put it so graphically, the comforts on an ocean liner allowed one only superficially to forget the real situation and its dangers, and there was, if he might be permitted to add a comment of his own, even a kind of frivolous provocation about that perfect comfort, somewhat like what the ancients called hubris (in his desire to please, he was even citing the classics)—"I am the king of Babylon," and that sort of thing—in a word, sacrilege.6.1 - Changes (49% in)
- It cost them nothing; for apart from the superficial thrills of listening to their idolized tenor wallow in molten splendor, to a voice surging in a cantabile that blessed the world with the high arts of passion—apart from such thrills, they had no love for the instrument and were quite willing to let anyone who liked take care of it.7.7 - Fullness of Harmony (35% in)
- His revisions only superficially disturbed the pretty contrast of honor and shabbiness apparent in the affidavits of the opposing side, particularly since he did not have at his disposal the Zutawskian party's duplicating machinery, but could only circulate a few typed carbon copies of his rejoinder.7.9 - The Great Petulance (28% in)
- It is the final arrangement, a return to the primal state of nature, only slightly moderated by certain chivalrous, bat purely superficial rules.7.9 - The Great Petulance (73% in)
There are no more uses of "superficial" in The Magic Mountain.
Typical Usage
(best examples)