Both Uses of
traverse
in
Absalom, Absalom!
- that I had only to lock the house and take my place in the buggy and traverse those twelve miles which I had not done since Ellen died, beside that brute who until Ellen died was not even permitted to approach the house from the front—that brute progenitor of brutes whose granddaughter was to supplant me, if not in my sister's house at least in my sister's bed to which (so they will tell you) I aspired—that brute who (brute instrument of that justice which presides over human events which, incept in the individual, runs smooth, less claw than velvet but which, by man or woman flouted, drives on like fiery steel and overrides both weakly just and unjust strong, both vanquisher and innocent v†
Chpt 5 *traverse = travel across
- And bow I traversed those same twelve miles once more after the two years since Ellen died (or was it the four years since Henry vanished or was it the nineteen years since I saw light and breathed) knowing nothing, able to learn nothing save this: a shot heard, faint and far away and even direction and source indeterminate, by two women, two young women alone in a rotting house where no man's footstep had sounded in two years—a shot, then an interval of aghast surmise above the cloth and needles which engaged them, then feet, in the hall and then on the stairs, running, hurrying, the feet of a man: and Judith with just time to snatch up the unfinished dress and bold it before her as the doo†
Chpt 5traversed = traveled across
Definitions:
-
(1)
(traverse) travel across
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Traverse is used in many senses. All the common ones reference crossing something; e.g., crossing terrain, a beam that extends across something, etc. A comprehensive dictionary will show less common meanings.