Word Finder - mythical

definition

Existing in myth.

definition

(by extension) Not real; false or fabricated.

The town is delightful; much nicer than a mythical Idaho location they'd like me to believe.

The entrance to it was in the extreme west, on the borders of Ocean, in the mythical land of the Cimmerians.

There are several categories of mythical gods.

The first, that of the Attiads, is mythical.

But when the story passes to Ireland Muirchu's narrative becomes full of the mythical element.

Mythical animals like dragons and unicorns are also sought after.

His system enables him to give a profound significance to the doctrines of the Church; but, instead of the system being accommodated to the doctrines, the doctrines - and especially the historical facts - acquire a new sense in the system, and often become only a mythical representation of speculative truth.

He was also called upon to do battle for his principle against men like Caspar Schwenkfeld (1490-1561) and Sebastian Franck (1500-1545), the latter of whom developed a system of pantheistic mysticism, and went so far in his opposition to the letter as to declare the whole of the historical element in Scripture to be but a mythical representation of eternal truth.

Nevertheless, the Assyriologist speaks with a good deal of confidence of dates as remote as 3800 B.C.,the time ascribed to King Sargon, who was once regarded as a mythical person, but is now known to have been an actual monarch.

It does not follow that faith in the Bible record is shaken, although in some quarters there has been a pronounced tendency to regard the history of the Egyptian sojourn as mythical; yet it cannot be denied that Egyptian records, corroborating at least some phases of the Bible story, would have been a most welcome addition to our knowledge.

Like Achilles he is represented as the perfect embodiment of the ideals of the race, and, as in the case of the Greek hero, it is customary to regard his personality and exploits as mythical.

Sigurd himself is not mentioned by any contemporary writer; but, apart from the dragon incident, there is nothing in the story which affords sufficient justification for regarding his personality as mythical.

But the Greenland colony was obscure, the country was believed to form part of Europe, and the records of the farther explorations were contained in sagas which were only rediscovered by modern scholarship. Throughout the middle ages, legendary tales of mythical lands lying in the western ocean - the Isle of St Brandan, of Brazil and Antilia - had been handed down.

Here the Lechici, as they called themselves (a name derived from the mythical patriarch, Lech), seemed to have lived for centuries, in loosely connected communities, the simple lives of huntsmen, herdsmen and tillers of the soil, till the pressure of rapacious neighbours compelled them to combine for mutual defence.

It is the mythical site of an octagonal house said to have been erected early in the 16th century by one John Groot, a Dutchman who had migrated to the north of Scotland by permission of James IV.

There were crude medieval notions that fossils were " freaks " or " sports " of nature (lusus naturae), or that they represented failures of a creative force within the earth (a notion of Greek and Arabic origin), or that larger and smaller fossils represented the remains of races of giants or of pygmies (the mythical idea).

The " Helena " of the Simonian system was certainly not an historical but a mythical figure.

To this class also fundamentally belong the Simoniani, who have included the probably historical figure of Simon Magus in a system which seems to be closely connected with those we have mentioned, especially if we look upon the " Helena " of this system as a mythical figure.

Moreover, this Central American document, mythical as it is, has an historical importance from its bringing in names belonging also to the traditions of Mexico proper.

The cult of the serpent is found in many parts of the Old World; it is also not unknown in America; in Australia, on the other hand, though many species of serpent are found, there does not appear to be any species of cult unless we include the Warramunga cult of the mythical Wollunqua totem animal, whom they seek to placate by rites.

Tradition assigns the foundation of Cracow to the mythical Krak, a Polish prince who is said to have built a stronghold here about A.D.

A tribe was called after his name, and Erichthonius, the mythical father of the Attic people, was the son of Hephaestus.

In the north, indeed, the name Grimhildr continued to have a purely mythical character and to be applied only to daemonic beings; but in Germany, the original home of the Nibelungen myth, it certainly lost all trace of this significance, and in the Nibelungenlied Kriemhild is no more than a beautiful princess, the daughter of King Dancrat and Queen Uote, and sister of the Burgundian kings Gunther, Giselher and Gernot, the masters of the Nibelungen hoard.

Theodor Abeling, who is disposed to reject or minimize the mythical origins, further suggests a confusion of the story of Attila's wife Ildico with that of the murder of Sigimund the Burgundian by the sons of Chrothildis, wife of Clovis.

In the mythical days Boeotia played a prominent part.

The gold-digging is referred to in somewhat mythical terms by Herodotus.

The suggested origin of the name Antwerp from Hand-werpen (hand-throwing), because a mythical robber chief indulged in the practice of cutting off his prisoners' hands and throwing them into the Scheldt, appeared to Motley rather farfetched, but it is less reasonable to trace it, as he inclines to do, from an t werf (on the wharf), seeing that the form Andhunerbo existed in the 6th century on the separation of Austrasia and Neustria.

It consisted simply in reducing cryolite with metallic sodium exactly as in Deville's chloride method, and it was claimed to possess various mythical advantages over its rival.

Whether he really was a historical personage, or merely the mythical ancestor of the family, cannot be decided.

The first four deal with the mythical history of Genoa from the time of its founder, Janus, the first king of Italy, and its enlarger, a second Janus "citizen of Troy", till its conversion to Christianity "about twenty-five years after the passion of Christ."

References to events of mythical and later times are introduced, and the poem ends with a reference to Alexander the Great, who was to unite Asia and Europe in his world-wide empire.

In the meantime knowledge on the subject is mingled with much that is obviously mythical and with gleanings from the casual references of travellers and authors.

Like the Curetes and Telchines they are mythical types of prehistoric workmen and architects, and as such the objects of worship.

Do they say that the histories are mythical ?

But the work which gained him his reputation as the Homer of Rome, and which called forth the admiration of Cicero and Lucretius and frequent imitation from Virgil, was the Annales, a long narrative poem in eighteen books, containing the record of the national story from mythical times to his own.

A hundred tales, for the most part probably mythical, are told of his powers and cunning during the years he spent among the mountains as a brigand leader.

The tale of Wayland falls naturally into two parts, the former of which contains obviously mythical features.

Mythical history relates how Seithennin's drunkenness inundated the land now covered by the bay, and how King Arthur's ship was wrecked upon Meisdiroedd Enlli near Bardsey.

Old legends represent him as having exterminated the Picts to the last man; and the Picts become, hi popular tradition, a mythical folk, hardly human, to whom great feats, including the building of Glasgow cathedral, are attributed, as the walls of Tiryns and Mycenae in Greece were traditionally assigned to the energy of the Cyclopes.

By " Presbyterianism " we are here to understand, not the Presbyterian form of church government - the kirk whose motto is Nec tamen consumebatur - but the pretensions of preachers to dominate the state by the mythical " power of the keys," by excommunication with civil penalties and by the fiercest religious intolerance.

The mythical saga of Ragnar Lodbrog is undoubtedly concerned with the Viking Age, though it is impossible now to identify most of the expeditions attributed to this northern hero, stories of conquest in Sweden, in Finland, in Russia and in England, which belong to quite a different age from this one.

This new land is shown on the extreme right of the map, disconnected from the mythical Terra Australis incognita.

Well Rahab apparently was the name of an ancient mythical sea monster.

A single mythical idea can be expressed in many different ways, and can be interwoven with other mythic motifs.

He recognizes that these chapters of the bible are purely mythical.

Yet this alone does not seem able to account for the almost mythical way he has been regarded.

The unity of early Christianity and the stress on apostolic authority counts heavily against the entirely mythical Jesus.

The minimalist position is that the stories in the bible are largely mythical in nature.

Believe me, we are not mythical at all.

This system is directly analogous to the creation of fictitious genealogies whereby individuals trace their origins back to a prestigious and perhaps mythical past.