Dear Colleagues,

 

Would someone please help me with the meaning of the following sentence?!! It is a sentence from H G Wells The War of the World.

 ... as I emerged from the top of Backer Street, I saw far away over the trees in the clearness of the sunset the hood of the Martian giant from which this howling proceeded.

What does "hood" and "giant" mean in this sentence? Does "hood" means a part that cover or shelter an equipment??

Is the word "giant" a verb in this context??  

 

"All about me the Red Weed clambered among the ruins, writhing to get above me in the dim." 

 In the previous context, dim is a noun. What does it mean? According to oxford and Longman dictionary dim is a verb or an adjective but not a noun.

 

"...; by virtue of it London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life about me had upheld me"

"London about me gazed at me spectrally." 

Does about mean surrounding? 

 

Thanks a lot ,

 

Giant is a noun;. never a verb. It refers to one of the huge spaceships that  landed on Earth during the alien invasion. Meanwhile, the hood is the top of the ship, described as such because of its rounded  shape. See a picture here:

 

As regards "dim", it�s usually used as an adjective. However, all attributive adjectives can be nominalised- i.e. given a noun status- by using an article before them. Thus, you refer to everything or everyone that has a certain characteristic. For example: the beautiful (everyone that is beautiful), the rich (everyone that is wealthy), the old (everyone/everything that is old), etc. Of course, you can also use the noun proper, dimness.

"About" is a synonym of "around" here. It means everything that surrounds you. In many cases, these prepositions/adverbs are interchangeable.

 

 

 

 

Thanks a  lot  lillianschild

 

But what does giant mean in the previous context?

 

Thanks a lot 

 

A giant is an unusually large person, so it can also mean anything that is very large. The Martian giant is the very large spaceship from Mars.

 

Bruce