Time to ask the question: What is the most unique sentence in all of Moby Dick? What sort of writing can be found here and nowhere else?
Like usual we approach the question from two different angles:
1) If we assigned all the words in a sentence a “rarity” score based on how seldom they occur, what sentence would have the highest total rarity?
2) What if we used the same word “rarity” scores but instead of total rarity we looked for the sentence with the highest average word rarity (and at least 10 words)?
Normally we would also consider multiple different ways of calculating rarity but both the metrics I used in the past gave the same results so no point talking about them this time.
Without further ado the sentence with the greatest sum of word rarities was:
Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title “Lord of the White Elephants” above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Cæsarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial colour the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe; and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things—the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of honor; though in many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.
Which you might recognize as the longest sentence in the book. Once again we see that when a sentence gets sufficiently long the sheer weight of its words become more important than the rarity of those words.
Then again, this is a sentence with a lot of very strange words: Magniloquent, incarnate, sublime, Cæsarian, preeminence, etc…
Let us turn now to a slightly more manageable sentence by looking for the phrase with the highest average per-word uniqueness score:
The scud all a flyin’, That’s his flip only foamin’; When he stirs in the spicin’,— Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the Ocean, oh!
Perhaps not the most profound sentence in the book, but probably one of the most amusing. I feel like with the right tune this would make a wonderful start to some sort of genre-defying sea shanty rap.
