READ BETWEEN THE LINES • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Read between the lines

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/rɛd bɪtwˈin ðə laɪnz/ Listen

verb

Read v. i. (past & past part. read; pres. part. reading)

To give advice or counsel. (Obs.)

To tell; to declare. (Obs.)

To perform the act of reading; to peruse, or to go over and utter aloud, the words of a book or other like document. "So they read in the book of the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense."

To study by reading; as, he read for the bar.

To learn by reading. "I have read of an Eastern king who put a judge to death for an iniquitous sentence."

To appear in writing or print; to be expressed by, or consist of, certain words or characters; as, the passage reads thus in the early manuscripts.

To produce a certain effect when read; as, that sentence reads queerly.

To read between the lines, to infer something different from what is plainly indicated; to detect the real meaning as distinguished from the apparent meaning.

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Etymology of 'Read between the lines'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Read between the lines" Quotes from Famous Books

... her and bring her back. We've got to—and we haven't much time. You must have read between the lines what her letter meant. After having turned Braithwaite down, she's gone off to beg him to elope with her. When a girl puts herself at a man's mercy like that, there's no knowing how he'll act. The chances are that, whatever he does, ...

— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... A woman, unless she is an Asiatic and a slave, does not wish to be given up unasked. I found myself the property of one who was not only indifferent to me, but, as I plainly saw, averse to me. It was but natural that I should meet scorn with scorn. In your letters I could read between the lines, and in your cold and constrained answers to your father's remarks about me I saw how strong was your aversion. In your letters to me this was still more evident. What then? I was proud and impetuous, ...

— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... to read in print what a writer says, and do not find it necessary to read between the lines what he intended to say, we may regard him as possessed of lucidity of ...

— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... But read between the lines and you will see that Israel Zangwill, child of the Ghetto, knows that the Peculiar People are peculiar through persecution, and not necessarily so through innate nature. Zangwill knows that no religion is pure except in its stage of persecution, and that Judaism, ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... the Higher Command is intended by anything that has been written. If such can be read between the lines, it is unintentional and a matter ...

— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley

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