Chapter 1 - page 11
burnings, chicanery, facilitated
"The wars which had been fought, the burnings and chicanery that religious dispute had facilitated, made me sick."
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Big Book - Bill's Story - page 11
In this sentence the words burnings and chicanery functions as nouns. In the sentence provided, "facilitated" functions as the past participle of the transitive verb facilitate. It acts as part of the past perfect verb phrase "had facilitated" within the relative clause "that religious dispute had facilitated," indicating an action completed in the past. 2
Definitions from Webster's 1930 edition. 3
grim, jest
"Judging from what I had seen in Europe and since, the power of God in human affairs was negligible, the Brotherhood of Man a grim jest."
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Big Book - Bill's Story - page 11
In the phrase "a grim jest," grim functions as an adjective (modifying the noun) and jest functions as a noun (acting as an appositive to "the Brotherhood of Man"). Together, they form a noun phrase describing the subject as a serious or cruel joke. 2
Definitions from Webster's 1930 edition. 3
tidings
"He shouted great tidings."
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Big Book - Bill's Story - page 11
In this sentence the word tidings functions as a plural noun. 2
Tidings in this sentence means great news, something that was not known before.
Definition from Webster's 1930 edition. 3
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Footnotes for page 11
1Quotes from the Big Book on listed on this page are from the public domain version, in the United States, of the 2nd edition of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Accessible at 12step.org
2Sentence diagramming, to determine the word usage within the sentence, was performed by CoreNLP at corenlp.run.
3Definitions used are from the Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language 1930 Edition. Access to this dictionary online is at Hathitrust.org