polygraphic

Updated: May 26, 2025

We all remember the terrible exclamation of the dying profligate, when a friend, to destroy what he supposed the hypochondriac idea of a spectre appearing in a certain shape at a given hour, placed before him a person dressed up in the manner he described. "Mon Dieu!" said the expiring sinner, who, it seems, saw both the real and polygraphic apparition, "il y en a deux!"

Sir Walter Scott - The Bride of Lammermoor

Harriet Martineau, one of the numerous writers, of both sexes, whom the polygraphic habits of this century make it hard to "class," was born at Norwich in 1802, and belonged to one of the families that made up the remarkable literary society which distinguished that city at the end of the last century and the beginning of this.

George Saintsbury - A History of Nineteenth Century Literature (1780-1895)

For in the first place it is an irritatingly conventional phrase, and in the second the paternity is usually questionable. He wrote a great deal else: and would no doubt in more recent times have been a "polygraphic" journalist of some distinction. And he had plenty to write about.

George Saintsbury - A Letter Book: Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing