Hello everybody!!
Yesterday I happened to read a short extract from Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway”, and there is one particular expression I can’t understand well: “How many million times she had seen her face, and always with the same imperceptible contraction! She pursued her lips when she looked in the glass. IT WAS TO GIVE HER FACE POINT. That was her SELF-POINTED; DARTLIKE; definite”.
I have been thinking about what the last sentences might mean, but I still can’t find a proper explanation; could you help me, please?
Thanks in advance!!
'bye, claudia
Hi Claudia,
Thanks for your contribution. I’ll try and offer some guidance on your question. First I think I should correct one part of your quotation. The sentence should read: she PURSED her lips … This means she contracted/gathered her lips into wrinkles - what you do if you want to plant a kiss on someone. The other expressions:’ pointed’and ‘dart like’ means she is trying to make her face look pointed rather than round. If you are on the internet, check out GOOGLE and type in the name of the artist MODIGLIANI and you will see some of the faces that he painted which have this pointed look.
Hope this helps.
Look forward to hearing from you again.
Alan
This expression is so much more colourful and descriptive than the usual ‘give someone a kiss’. It really conveys the idea of a big, sonorous kiss.
There should be a proverb about it: ‘Plant a kiss and you’ll reap bliss’ or something like that!
I also like: ‘to kiss and make up’, ‘to blow someone a kiss’ and ‘to give someone the kiss of life’. You can even make an adjective out of it: ‘kissable’, which has no one-word equivalent in French, English or German that I know of. There are quite a few more phrases using this word. Funny, isn’t it, when you think that they come from people who aren’t reputedly big kissers.
