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AS LARGE AS LIFE AND TWICE AS NATURAL

Posted by Victoria S Dennis on November 05, 2006

In Reply to: AS LARGE AS LIFE AND TWICE AS NATURAL posted by ESC on November 04, 2006

: : : Dear experts,

: : : Is the expression AS LARGE AS LIFE AND TWICE AS NATURAL a mere emphatic (or ironic?) variant of AS LARGE AS LIFE?

: : : Thank you,
: : : Yuri

: : Yes, barring some peculiarity evident in the context. It certainly is ironic, but still probably just emphatic. SS

: The way I've heard it: large as life and twice as ugly.


"As large as life and twice as natural" is a quotation from Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures through the the Looking Glass". The jazz/blues/rock musician Davey Graham used it as the title of an album in the 1960s, which helped to popularise the phrase among people who had never read Lewis Carroll.

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