Plums
[p'lʌmz]
Unserious Contents or Definition
Plums, if they are green, unless seen on trees, are signs of personal and relative discomfort. To see them ripe, denotes joyous occasions, which, however, will be of short duration. To eat them, denotes that you will engage in flirtations and other evanescent pleasures. To gather them, you will obtain your desires, but they will not prove so solid as you had imagined. If you find yourself gathering them up from the ground, and find rotten ones among the good, you will be forced to admit that your expectations are unrealized, and that there is no life filled with pleasure alone.
Inputed by Camille
Examples
- Against cakes: how cakes are bad things, especially if they are sweet and have plums in them. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- Couldn't you--didn't you--now, if it had rained sugar-plums, or three-cornered raspberry tarts, or anything of that sort! Charles Dickens. Bleak House.
- It is needless to say that all the caveats are not quite so full of plums, but this is certainly a wonder. Frank Lewis Dyer. Edison, His Life and Inventions.
Inputed by Camille