All 8 Uses
beguile
in
Sophie's Choice
(Auto-generated)
- and then later I experienced a grander empathy with Jewish folk which, I am persuaded, is chiefly available to those Southerners shattered for years and years by rock-hard encounter with the anguish of Abraham and Moses' stupendous quest and the Psalmist's troubled hosannas and the abyssal vision of Daniel and all the other revelations, bittersweet confections, tall tales and beguiling horrors of the Protestant/Jewish Bible.†
p. 41.9beguiling = charming or enchanting; or deceiving through charm
- European women often boss their men too, but with a beguiling subtlety unknown to most American females.†
p. 79.7 *
- His range was astonishing and I had constantly to remind myself that I was talking to a scientist, a biologist (I kept thinking of a prodigy like Julian Huxley, whose essays I had read in college)—this man who possessed so many literary references and allusions, both classical and modern, and who within the space of an hour could, with no gratuitous strain, weave together Lytton Strachey, Alice in Wonderland, Martin Luther's early celibacy, A Midsummer Night's Dream and the mating habits of the Sumatran orangutan into a little jewel box of a beguiling lecture which facetiously but with a serious overtone explored the intertwined nature of sexual voyeurism and exhibitionism.†
p. 200.6
- Her stomach gurgled in fear—fear not of the Commandant himself but of failure of nerve, fear that she would ultimately lack the craft, the power of improvisation, the subtlety of manner, the histrionic gift, at last the beguiling convincingness by which she so desperately yearned to maneuver him into a vulnerable position and thus perhaps bend him to serve the modest demands of her will.†
p. 249.3
- Your youth, I suppose, that wonderful flexibility of your age that allows you to be beguiled by, rather than devoured by, this octopus of a city.†
p. 315.3beguiled = deceived through charm or enchantment
- He bought her fine clothes (including the droll and beguiling, matching "costumes" I first saw them dressed in), rings, earrings, bracelets, bangles, beads.†
p. 340.8beguiling = charming or enchanting; or deceiving through charm
- And so this fresh American experience with its hint of bucolic beguilements gave her a thrill of joy and anticipation keener than any of its kind since those childhood summers when the train chuffed out from the Cracow station toward Vienna and the Alto Adige and the swirling mists of the Dolomites.†
p. 345.5
- Besides, I was quite simply devoted to Nathan, at least to that beguiling, generous, life-enhancing Nathan who had shed his entourage of demons—and since it was this Nathan who had returned to us, a Nathan rather drawn and pale but seemingly purged of whatever horrors had possessed him on that recent evening, the reborn warmth and brotherly affection I felt was wonderful; my delight could only have been surpassed by the response of Sophie, whose joy was a form of barely controlled delirium, very moving to witness.†
p. 454.5beguiling = charming or enchanting; or deceiving through charm
Definitions:
-
(1)
(beguile) to charm, enchant, or entertain someone; or to deceive -- especially through charm
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Much less commonly, in classic literature, beguile can mean to "pass time pleasantly."