COMMENTARY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Commentary

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/kˈɑməntˌɛri/ Listen

noun

Commentary n. (pl. commentaries)

A series of comments or annotations; esp., a book of explanations or expositions on the whole or a part of the Scriptures or of some other work. "This letter... was published by him with a severe commentary."

A brief account of transactions or events written hastily, as if for a memorandum; usually in the plural; as, Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War.

A single essay, written or spoken, discussing or explaining a topic, especially regarding a recent event; as, the election report was followed by several commentaries from political analysts.

Something considered as exemplifying or ilustrating a point or opinion; as, the California recall vote is a sad commentary on the frivolous approach of people to politics.

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Etymology of 'Commentary'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Commentary" Quotes from Famous Books

... his commentary (Hierakonpolis, i. p. 9) on this scene, Prof. Petrie supposes that the seven-pointed star sign means "king," and compares the eight-pointed star "used for king in Babylonia." The eight-pointed star of the cuneiform ...

— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall

... owed to the "Roman of the Rose" was considerable, and by no means confined to the favourite May-morning exordium and the recurring machinery of a vision—to the origin of which latter (the dream of Scipio related by Cicero and expounded in the widely-read Commentary of Macrobius) the opening lines of the "Romaunt" point. He owes to the French poem both the germs of felicitous phrases, such as the famous designation of Nature as "the Vicar of the almighty Lord," and perhaps touches used by him in passages like that in which he afterwards, ...

— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... to acknowledge the gift of one hundred copies of the "People's Commentary on the Gospel according to St. Luke," by Edwin W. Rice, D.D., from the American Sunday-school Union, at Philadelphia, Penn. These books will be sent to our schools in the South, where they will be of great benefit to the teachers in the Sunday-schools, ...

— The American Missionary, Vol. 44, No. 5, May 1890 • Various

... examples of deeds of sale of this class of real property will be found in Dr. Meissner's A. P., pp. 31-35. The principal terms used in such conveyances are well discussed and for the most part correctly explained in his commentary (pp. 119-23). In all these cases we have the phrase, bitu epsu. Dr. Meissner also regards as "houses" the plots of land called E KI-GAL and E KISLAH; they are, however, mentioned later with some other plots of land where E denotes a ...

— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns

... of rising again a better animal, and I may rise a wiser man. I want to eat and drink and be instructed. Some day I expect to extract from my pudding the flavor of manna which I ate in the desert, and then I shall write you a contemporaneous commentary on the Exodus. Nor do I despair of remembering yet, over a dish of corn, the time when I fed on worms; and then I may be able to recall how it felt to be made at last into a man. Give me to eat and ...

— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

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