READ BETWEEN THE LINES • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Read between the lines

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/rɛd bɪtwˈin ðə laɪnz/ Listen

verb

Read v. i. (past & past part. read; pres. part. reading)

To give advice or counsel. (Obs.)

To tell; to declare. (Obs.)

To perform the act of reading; to peruse, or to go over and utter aloud, the words of a book or other like document. "So they read in the book of the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense."

To study by reading; as, he read for the bar.

To learn by reading. "I have read of an Eastern king who put a judge to death for an iniquitous sentence."

To appear in writing or print; to be expressed by, or consist of, certain words or characters; as, the passage reads thus in the early manuscripts.

To produce a certain effect when read; as, that sentence reads queerly.

To read between the lines, to infer something different from what is plainly indicated; to detect the real meaning as distinguished from the apparent meaning.

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Etymology of 'Read between the lines'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Read between the lines" Quotes from Famous Books

... Blix. "They were born for each other. Just see, K. D. B. is a good housekeeper, and wants a respectable middle-aged gentleman. Captain Jack is a respectable middle-aged gentleman, and wants a good housekeeper. Oh, and besides, I can read between the lines! I just feel they would be congenial. If they know what's best for themselves, they would write to ...

— Blix • Frank Norris

... man with a heart constant and stout enough to face the risks he ran would be hard to kill. When you read between the lines, it's a moving tale. Think of the long, perilous rides he made through an enemy's land, all for a glance at his disdainful lady! They watched the fords in those days, but neither brawling rivers nor well-mounted horsemen could stop him. At last, he came one night with a ...

— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss

... Naboth, Jehu to Samaria. In all these cases letters were used for treacherous purposes, and they are all short. Probably the authors of these plots feared to betray their real intention orally, and so they committed their orders to writing, expecting their correspondents to read between the lines. It is not till the time of Isaiah that the references to writing become frequent. Intercourse between Palestine on the one hand and Babylon and Egypt on the other had then increased greatly, and the severance of the nation itself tended ...

— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... over this curt missive, which was not couched precisely in the suave words that might be expected from the Greek. Read between the lines, its meaning was significant. Michael and his nephew, hungering for the spoils, had patched up a truce. They were already contemplating another military pronunciamento, and Beliani, having made his own ...

— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... for a visit, supposedly to give Grandmother a chance to see her only sister once more, but in reality to have Ethel ingratiate herself with the old lady, thereby causing her to leave the girl the bulk of her fortune. Ethel read between the lines and at first refused, but after listening to her mother for a while and thinking perhaps she was right, she allowed herself to ...

— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson

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