All 3 Uses of
lurid
in
How to Read Literature Like a Professor
- The narrator narrowly escapes before the house itself pulls apart and crashes into the "black and lurid tarn" at its base.†
Chpt 13 *
- Dickens, who could be very suggestive, was aware that his novels were often read around the family breakfast table, and he wanted to protect children from anything luridly sexual, as well as to provide wives with plausible deniability.†
Chpt 16luridly = shocking
- He treats us to "a singularly dreary tract of country," to "a few rank sedges" and "white trunks of decayed trees," to "the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn," so that we're ready for the "bleak walls" of the house with its "vacant eye-like windows" and its "barely perceptible fissure" zigzagging its way down the wall right down to "the sullen waters of the tarn."†
Chpt 19
Definitions:
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(1)
(lurid) shocking, as from disturbing details of a horrible story, or a color more vivid (bright or deep) than would be expected
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Long ago, lurid referred to a yellowish color or things and from there to things so shocking they make someone turn pale. Later, but still in the 18th century, it was used to describe a vivid red and is still used to describe vivid colors--especially red.