The Side Roads image

Wandering Through Chapter 3 - More About Alcoholism
Pages 30 - 43


Chapter 3 - page 40


conceded

"He was interested and conceded that he had some of the symptoms, but he was a long way from admitting that he could do nothing about it himself."1
Big Book - More About Alcoholism - spans pages 37 - 38

In this sentence the word conceded functions as a verb.2

Definition from Webster's 1930 edition.3

Webster's definition of conceded


subtle

"I rather appreciated your ideas about the subtle insanity which precedes the first drink, but I was confident it could not happen to me after what I had learned."1
Big Book - More About Alcoholism - page 40

In this sentence subtle functions as an adjective.2

Definition from Webster's 1930 edition.3

Webster's definition of subtle


licking

"I reasoned I was not so far advanced as most of you fellows, that I had been usually successful in licking my other personal problems, and that I would therefore be successful where you men failed."1
Big Book - More About Alcoholism - page 40

In this sentence licking acts as a noun (gerund). A gerund is the -ing form of a verb that acts as a noun.2

In this sentence, the word "licking" is used as a slang term. In this context, it refers to 'suffer a beating,' 'to be defeated soundly,' or 'to suffer setbacks, losses, or failures.' 3

Fred the accountant, believes his struggle with alcohol is not as serious as what the other men went through. He remembers that he has handled the other problems in his life by depending only on his own willpower to overcome them.

Photo of boxing match knockout
Billy Conn Takes A Licking In The 13th Round
Heavyweight Champion Joe Louis Knockouts The Light Heavyweight Champion Billy Conn at the 1941 World Heavyweight Championship, New York City. From the New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection (Library of Congress) CC0 License


   
  On To Page 41 Button on to page 41
  Back to page 39 Button back to page 39
  Top of Page Button jump to the top of this page

Footnotes for page 40

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.

3from the Farlex Dictionary of Idioms