He [Cicero] said that those orators who used to strain their voices and cry aloud in the pulpit were privy to their own weakness and insufficience otherwise.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 439.
| Punctual, | } |
| Punctually. |
‘This word is now confined to the meagre denoting of accuracy in respect to time—fidelity to the precise moment of an appointment. But originally it was just as often and just as reasonably applied to space as to time. Nor only was it applied to time and space, but it had a large and very elegant figurative use’ (De Quincey, Note Book). Thus a ‘punctual’ narration was a narration which entered into minuter points of detail.
The stars that seem to roll
... merely to officiate light
Round this opacous earth, this punctual spot.
Milton, Paradise Lost, viii. 19-23.
Truly I thought I could not be too punctual in describing the animal life, it being so serviceable for our better understanding the divine.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, Preface, p. x.
All curious solicitude about riches smells of avarice; even the very disposing of it with a too punctual and artificial liberality is not worth a painful solicitude.—Cotton, Montaigne’s Essays, b. iii. c. 9.
Every one is to give a reason of his faith; but priests or ministers more punctually than any.—H. More, Grand Mystery of Godliness, b. x. c. 12.