Both Uses of
diligent
in
The House of the Seven Gables
- They were generally poverty-stricken; always plebeian and obscure; working with unsuccessful diligence at handicrafts; laboring on the wharves, or following the sea, as sailors before the mast; living here and there about the town, in hired tenements, and coming finally to the almshouse as the natural home of their old age.†
Chpt 1diligence = hard work and care
- This young Matthew Maule, the carpenter, it must be observed, was a person little understood, and not very generally liked, in the town where he resided; not that anything could be alleged against his integrity, or his skill and diligence in the handicraft which he exercised.†
Chpt 13 *
Definitions:
-
(1)
(diligent as in: she is diligent) hard work and care in tasks -- often continuing when others might quit because of difficulties
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) More specifically in law, diligence or due diligence refers to the care or attention expected by the law in doing something such as fulfilling the terms of a contract.
More rarely, but sometimes seen in classic literature, a diligence is a public stagecoach.