commonplace book


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commonplace book

n.
A personal journal in which quotable passages, literary excerpts, and comments are written.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

commonplace book

n
(Literary & Literary Critical Terms) a notebook in which quotations, poems, remarks, etc, that catch the owner's attention are entered
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

com′monplace book`


n.
a book in which noteworthy quotations, comments, etc., are written.
[1570–80]
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Noun1.commonplace book - a notebook in which you enter memorabilia
notebook - a book with blank pages for recording notes or memoranda
Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection. © 2003-2012 Princeton University, Farlex Inc.
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References in classic literature ?
Dalloway and the habit, now fallen into decline, of quoting Greek in the House of Commons, noted, in the great commonplace book that lies open beside us as we talk, the fact that all men, even men like Ridley, really prefer women to be fashionable.
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When our visitor was silent Holmes stretched out his hand and took down letter "S" of his commonplace book. For once he dug in vain into that mine of varied information.
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Then Sherlock Holmes pulled down from the shelf one of the ponderous commonplace books in which he placed his cuttings.
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Even after abandoning his law practice, he continued to rely on his legal commonplace book to document the legal, historical, and philosophical reading that helped shape his new role as a statesman.
What We Are Reading Today: Jefferson's Legal Commonplace Book by Thomas Jefferson
Kathleen Riley, in "'All the terrible beauty of a Greek tragedy': Wilde's 'Epistola' and the Euripidean Christ," reiterates examples of Wilde's impressive study skills and cites considerable Greek text, as well as Wilde's poems referencing Euripides from Wilde's Commonplace Book, his personal notebook kept at Oxford.
The Classic Genius of Oscar Wilde
"Below Freezing" is a unique assemblage of scientific fact, newspaper reports, and excerpts from novels, short stories, nonfiction, history, creative nonfiction, and poetry--a commonplace book for our era of altering climate.
Below Freezing: Elegy for the Melting Planet
Over time, the term evolved to also describe a commonplace book, a receptacle for intellectual and spiritual wealth.
Kashkul: Contemporary Art, Cultural Preservation, Research, and Translation in Kurdistan
commonplace book now at the Houghton Library at Harvard, a volume said
Paper Slips: Album, Archiving, Accident
When Ben Jonson appealed to Seneca's adage (Patet omnibus veritas) in his seventeenth-century commonplace book, the sheer volume of printed material was already making one's access to truth increasingly difficult.
SCIENCE WITHOUT FRONTIERS: Cosmopolitanism and National Interests in the World of Learning, 1870-1940
When one of them drops his commonplace book [a blank book in which you write bits and pieces you want to remember], Tommy sends his dog, Samson, to fetch it, so it can be returned to the soldier.
Man's best friend
Written in chronological order, Dramatic Extracts in Seventeenth-Century English Manuscripts is of necessity made up of microhistories, each of a different commonplace book or compiler.
Dramatic Extracts in Seventeenth-Century English Manuscripts: Watching, Reading, Changing Plays
Two consecutive chapters, for example, make conflicting claims about when the term "commonplace book" was first applied to Middle English manuscripts (150, 173).
Insular Books: Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain

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