Literary Use
John Clare (English peasant poet) wrote with his own spelling and no punctuation: he complained c.1820-1830 to his editors that people could understand him, and that he wouldn't use "that awkward squad of colon, semi-colon, comma, and full stop" (source - display in Clare's cottage, Helpston.)
In Villette (pub. 1853) Charlotte Bronte writes of M. Paul Emanuel: "Irritable he was; one heard that, as he apostrophized with vehemence the awkward squad under his orders."
In Chapter 16 of Our Mutual Friend (1864–65), Charles Dickens describes the character Sloppy as " Full-Private Number One in the Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life."
Norman Cameron ends one of his poems - Forgive me, sire - with the words 'awkward squad', which plays with the above definition. This would have been written at least about 50 years before the current use.
Read more about this topic: Awkward Squad
Famous quotes containing the word literary:
“There are in me, in literary terms, two distinct characters: one who is taken with roaring, with lyricism, with soaring aloft, with all the sonorities of phrase and summits of thought; and the other who digs and scratches for truth all he can, who is as interested in the little facts as the big ones, who would like to make you feel materially the things he reproduces.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
“First literature came to refer only to itself, the literary theory.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)