fluency

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“
There is a petty lawyer's fluency, which is sufficiently impressive to him who is devoid of that talent, though it be, in so many cases, nothing more than a facility of expressing with accuracy and speed what everybody thinks and says more slowly, without new information, or precision of thought,--but the same thing, neither less nor more.

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Definitions (8)

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  1. The quality of being fluent. The quality of being flowing or changeable: opposed to rigidity. An arbitrary rule, an institution, must be opposed to the fluency, the ever-changing relations, of nature and fact. Mind, IX. 396.
  2. Readiness and smoothness of utterance; volubility. Unpremeditated prayers, uttered with great fluency, with a devout warmth and earnestness, are apt to make strong and awakening impressions on the minds of the generality of hearers. Bp. Atterbury, Sermons, II. xx. A man of weak capacity, with fluency of speech, triumphs in outrunning you. Steele, Tatler, No. 244.
  3. Affluence; abundance. Those who grow old in fluency and ease. Sandys, Paraphrase of Job.
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Examples (50)

  • Her marriage to Wolff resulted in French fluency, with recordings and appearances in French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
  • These little differences cost the side attacking fluency, as defenders can regain their positioning and anticipate the coming move more easily. —  WordPress.com News
  • There is a petty lawyer's fluency, which is sufficiently impressive to him who is devoid of that talent, though it be, in so many cases, nothing more than a facility of expressing with accuracy and speed what everybody thinks and says more slowly, without new information, or precision of thought,--but the same thing, neither less nor more. —  The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 11, September, 1858
  • He was endowed with few of the qualities which secure a quick success--fluency, finish of style, the art of giving graceful utterance to current thought; he had in full measure the stronger if slower powers--sound knowledge, infinite industry, and the sympathetic insight of penetrative imagination--that ultimately hold the fastnesses of fame. —  Thomas Carlyle
  • He is generally a smooth and fluent versifier, but his fluency is his undoing; he wraps up his material in too great a mass of verbiage THE VISION CONCERNING PIERS THE PLOWMAN. —  A History of English Literature
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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
 

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