All 7 Uses of
utter
in
Running in the Family
- Humorous and gentle when sober, he changed utterly and would do anything to get alcohol.†
p. 58.4 *utterly = completely or totally
- By the time she was twenty she was living in Colombo and tentatively engaged to Shelton de Saram—a very good looking and utterly selfish man.†
p. 113.9
- His diplomat's face is utterly shocked.†
p. 156.9
- Almost utterly humble.†
p. 168.1
- To us he was an utterly charming man, always gracious.†
p. 175.2
- After the cups of tea, coffee, public conversations ...I want to sit down with someone and talk with utter directness, want to talk to all the lost history like that deserving lover.†
p. 54.9
- On one of the last occasions that my mother left my father, after the tirade that was brief, loud, alcoholically one-sided, she told him she was leaving him at moo P.M. She bundled us all up and, after my father grabbed the car key and threw it into the darkness of a hundred tea bushes, she got four servants and with each of us on a pair of shoulders, marched off through tea estate and dense jungle in utter darkness to a neighbouring home five miles away.†
p. 170.6
Definitions:
-
(1)
(utter as in: utter stupidity) complete or total (used as an intensifier--typically when stressing how bad something is)
-
(2)
(utter as in: utter a complaint) say something or make a sound with the voice
-
(3)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Less commonly, and archaically, utter can mean to let out.