Definition:
A group of words that modifies an independent clause as a whole. See also:
- Building Sentences with Absolutes
- Revising Sentences with Absolutes
- Exercise: Sentence Building with Absolutes
- Absolutes and Participial Phrases in Shaw's "The Eighty-Yard Run"
- Absolutes and Appositives in Conroy's "Midair"
Etymology:
From the Latin, "absolve" or "loosen"Examples:
- "Six boys came over the hill half an hour early that afternoon, running hard, their heads down, their forearms working, their breath whistling."
(John Steinbeck, The Red Pony) - "Bolenciecwcz was staring at the floor now, trying to think, his great brow furrowed, his huge hands rubbing together, his face red."
(James Thurber, "University Days") - "The men sit on the edge of the pens, the big white and silver fish between their knees, ripping with knives and tearing with hands, heaving the disemboweled bodies into a central basket."
(William G. Wing, "Christmas Comes First on the Banks") - "You can get a fair sense of the perils of an elevator shaft by watching an elevator rush up and down one, its counterweight flying by, like the blade on a guillotine."
(Nick Paumgarten, "Up and Then Down," The New Yorker, April 21, 2008) - "At a right angle to the school was the back of the church, its bricks painted the color of dried blood."
(Pete Hamill, A Drinking Life, 1994) - Their slender bodies sleek and black against the orange sky, the storks circled above us.
- "One by one, down the hill come the mothers of the neighborhood, their kids running beside them."
(Roger Rosenblatt, "Making Toast," The New Yorker, December 15, 2008) - "I could see, even in the mist, Spurn Head stretching out ahead of me in the gloom, its spine covered in marram grass and furze, its shingle flanks speared with the rotting spars of failed breakwaters."
(Will Self, "A Real Cliff Hanger," The Independent, August 30, 2008)
Pronunciation: AB-so-LOOT FRAZE
Also Known As: absolute or absolute clause
