Word Finder - epithet

definition

A term used to characterize a person or thing.

definition

A term used as a descriptive substitute for the name or title of a person.

definition

One of many formulaic words or phrases used in the Iliad and Odyssey to characterize a person, a group of people, or a thing.

definition

An abusive or contemptuous word or phrase.

definition

A word in the scientific name of a taxon following the name of the genus or species. This applies only to formal names of plants, fungi and bacteria. In formal names of animals the corresponding term is the specific name.

definition

To term; to refer to as.

example

He was epitheted "the king of fools".

Her star was the planet Venus, and classical writers give her the epithet Caelestis and Urania.

The epithet is applied to Zeus and the Erinyes as the deities of revenge and punishment.

He adopted the name Grynaeus from the epithet of Apollo in Virgil.

Originally the epithet was meant to be taken strictly, viz.

The most common and consistent tradition connects Homer with the valley of Smyrna and the banks of the Meles; his figure was one of the stock types on Smyrnaean coins, one class of which was called Homerian; the epithet "Melesigenes" was applied to him; the cave where he was wont to compose his poems was shown near the source of the river; his temple, the Homereum, stood on its banks.

It is worth noticing that this epithet like " lord of eternity " (or, " of the world "), has a distinctly Jewish character.

Originally, Iphigeneia, the "mighty born," is probably merely an epithet of Artemis, in which the notion of a priestess of the goddess had its origin.

Tantalus's betrayal of the secrets of the gods refers to the sun unveiling the secrets of heaven; the slaying of Pelops denotes the going-down of the sun, Pelops meaning the "` gray one," an epithet of the gloomy sky in which the last rays of the sun are extinguished.

In one Asura, whose Aryan original was Varuna, he concentrated the whole of the divine character, and conferred upon it the epithet of "the wise" (mazdao) .

The left branch is appreciably noticed near Odessa and the north-west corner; the right branch sweeps past the Crimea, strikes the Caucasian shore (where it comes to the surface running across, but not into, the south-east corner of the Black Sea), and finally disperses flowing westwards along the northern coast of Asia Minor between Cape Jason and 1 The early Greek navigators gave it the epithet of axenus, i.e.

The last distinctive epithet was derived from the little hamlet in the vicinity which furnished shelter, not only to the workmen, but to the monks of St Jerome who were afterwards to be in possession of the monastery; and the hamlet itself is generally but perhaps erroneously supposed to be indebted for its name to the scoriae or dross of certain old iron mines.

It stood on a small rocky peninsula with a natural harbour on the northern side and an open but serviceable bay on the southern; and from this position acquired the epithet of SLoroµos, or the two-mouthed.

A city of Peloponnesus on the east coast of Laconia, distinguished by the epithet of Limera (either "The Well-havened" or " The Hungry ").

No satisfactory derivation of the name Athena has been given 1; Pallas, at first an epithet, but after Pindar used 1 0.

The name of the city or tribe which it gives us is touta marouca, and it mentions also a citadel with the epithet tarincris.

As in the case of Ninib, Nergal appears to have absorbed a number of minor solar deities, which accounts for the various names or designations under which he appears, such as Lugalgira, Sharrapu ("the burner," perhaps a mere epithet), Ira, Gibil (though this name more properly belongs to Nusku, q.v.) and Sibitti.

There is not a single branch of the law which he did not simplify and amend, and the iron firmness with which he caused justice to be administered, irrespective of persons, if it exposed him to the charge of tyranny from the nobles, also won for him from the common people the epithet of " the Just."

On the other hand, there is an epithet Asir or Ashir ("overseer") applied to several gods and particularly to the deity Asur, a fact which introduced a third element of confusion into the discussion of the name Assur.

Histrio-mastix, published in 1633, was a violent attack upon stage plays in general, in which the author pointed out that kings and emperors who had favoured the drama had been carried off by violent deaths, which assertion might easily be interpreted as a warning to the king, and applied a disgraceful epithet to actresses, which, as Henrietta Maria was taking part in the rehearsal of a ballet, was supposed to apply to the queen.

The Homeric poems (12th - 10th centuries) know of Dorians only in Crete, with the obscure epithet TpexaiKes, and no hint of their origin.

Morris, in The Defence of Guinevere, speaks of "gloomy Gawain"; perhaps the most absurdly misleading epithet which could possibly have been applied to the "gay, gratious, and gude" knight of early English tradition.

The ancient Asculum was the capital of Picenum, and it 1 The epithet distinguishes it from Ascoli Satriano (anc. Ausculum), which lies m.

At his own request he was ordered east, and on the 23rd of September 1861 was made brigadier-general of volunteers and assigned to command a brigade in the Army of the Potomac. He took part in the Peninsula campaign, and the handling of his troops in the engagement at Williamsburg on the 5th of May 1862, was so brilliant that McClellan reported "Hancock was superb," an epithet always afterwards applied to him.

They were companions of St Columba and their efforts to convert the folk to Christianity seem to have impressed the popular imagination, for several islands bear the epithet "Papa" in commemoration of the preachers.

They spent their energy in attacking Plato and Aristotle, and hence earned the opprobrious epithet of Eristic. They used their dialectic subtlety to disprove the possibility of motion and decay; unity is the negation of change, increase and decrease, birth and death.

But as early as 1865, Arminians were welcomed to Congregational fellowship. In the last few decades, with the spread in the community of innovations in doctrinal and critical opinions, a wider diversity of belief has come to prevail, so that " Evangelical," in the popular sense of the term, rather than " Calvinistic," is the epithet more suit able to American Congregational preachers and churches.

The Homeric epithet 'ApyEtybO rqs, which the Greeks interpreted as "the slayer of Argus," inventing a myth to account for Argus, is explained as originally an epithet of the wind (apyEO-Tris), which clears away the mists (apyos, q5aivco).

In a synod which met in 430, he decided in favour of the epithet 1 At Alexandria the mystic and allegorical tendency prevailed, at Antioch the practical and historical, and these tendencies showed themselves in different methods of study, exegesis and presentation of doctrine.

His character peeps forth most clearly perhaps in the saying which has become his epithet, Atterdag (" There will be a to-morrow"), which is an indication of that invincible doggedness to which he owed most of his successes.

Louis well deserved the epithet of "great" bestowed upon him by his contemporaries; later (1241) the Tatar hordes, under Batu, appeared Sword.

That glorious epithet belonged of right to Hungary,which g p g g had already borne the brunt of the struggle with the Ottoman power for more than a century.

As applied to a class of epistles, the title dates from Eusebius, early in the 4th century; the epithet is given to single epistles by Origen, and is found as far back as the end of the 2nd century.

The Outer Hebrides being almost entirely composed of gneiss the epithet suitably serves them, but, strictly speaking, only the more northerly of the Inner Hebrides may be distinguished as Trap Islands.

Each case must be considered on its merits; and the critic's procedure must of necessity be "eclectic" - an epithet often used with a tinge of reproach, the ground for which it is not easy to discover.

A peculiarity of larch wood is the difficulty with which it is ignited, although so resinous; and, coated with a thin layer of plaster, beams and pillars of larch might probably be found to justify Caesar's epithet " igni impenetrabile lignum "; even the small branches are not easily kept alight, and a larch fire in the open needs considerable care.

Other examples in which buff or rust-colour predominates have also been deemed distinct, and to those has been applied the epithet russata.

Failing to obtain currency for his radical'propaganda, he retired to his native province, and there established a school (the Risshi-sha) for teaching the principles of government by the people, thus earning for himself the epithet of "the Rousseau of Japan."

The Greek word is used by Homer as a personal epithet, and by Hesiod for the hard metal in armour, while Theophrastus applies it to the hardest crystal.

The Latin word ecclesiasticus is, properly speaking, not a name, but an epithet meaning "churchly," so that it would serve as a designation of any book which was read in church or received ecclesiastical sanction, but in practice Ecclesiasticus has become a by-name for the Wisdom of Sirach.

In the Greek text this name appears as "Jesus son of Sirach Eleazar" (probably a corruption of the Hebrew reading), and the epithet "of Jerusalem" is added, the translator himself being resident in Egypt.

Different writers style her "the tenth Muse," "the flower of the Graces," "a miracle," "the beautiful," the last epithet referring to her writings, not her person, which is said to have been small and dark.

To the last he sacrificed expression rather too much to style, and he was perhaps over conscious of the balanced epithet.

It is, however, doubtful in what sense this word appeared to him, either as a name of God, as in the Old Testament it often occurs and regularly without the article, or actually as the epithet of a heavenly book, although this use cannot be substantiated from Jewish literature.

The Homeric epithet 130wires may have meant "cow-faced" to the earliest worshippers of Hera, though by Homer and the later Greeks it was understood as "large-eyed," like the cow.

The date at which these conceptions became general is not quite certain, but it can hardly be later than the Middle Kingdom, when the dead man has the epithet justified appended to his name in the inscriptions of his tomb.

The New Empire.The epithet new is generally attached to this period, and empire instead of kingdom marks its wider power.

Alike for what he did and for what he was, there is none to equal Alfred in the whole line of English sovereigns; and no monarch in history ever deserved more truly the epithet of Great.

The epithet ha-zaken (" the elder"), which usually accompanies his name, proves him to have been a member of the Sanhedrin, and according to a trustworthy authority Hillel filled his leading position for forty years, dying, therefore, about A.D.

Edmund, the "deed-doer" as the chronicle calls him, "Edmundus magnificus" as Florence of Worcester describes him, perhaps translating the Saxon epithet, was buried at Glastonbury, an abbey which he had entrusted in 943 to the famous Dunstan.

As an orator he well deserved the epithet of "the Hungarian purple Cicero."