All 5 Uses of
muse
in
Crime and Punishment, by Dostoyevsky
- He pondered and rubbed his forehead, and, strange to say, after long musing, suddenly, as if it were spontaneously and by chance, a fantastic thought came into his head.†
Chpt 1.5musing = reflecting (thinking) -- perhaps aloud
- They want to decoy me there and confound me over everything," he mused, as he went out on to the stairs—"the worst of it is I'm almost light-headed...I may blurt out something stupid..."†
Chpt 2.1 *mused = thought -- possibly aloud
- "I don't know....I haven't yet decided whether to take that money or not," he said, musing again; and, seeming to wake up with a start, he gave a brief ironical smile.†
Chpt 5.4musing = reflecting (thinking) -- perhaps aloud
- Then he sank into dreary musing again.†
Chpt 6.6
- He fell to musing by what process it could come to pass, that he could be humbled before all of them, indiscriminately—humbled by conviction.†
Chpt 6.7
Definitions:
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(1)
(muse as in: her musings) reflect (think) deeply on a subject -- perhaps aloud
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(2)
(muse as in: She was his muse) the source of an artist's inspiration - especially a person or mythological goddessThe 9 muses were the daughters of the Greek gods Zeus & Mnemosyne. Each of the muses was thought to inspire and preside over one of the arts.
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(3)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) More rarely, muse is used as a synonym for "poet".