Word Finder - serpent

definition

A snake.

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An obsolete wind instrument in the brass family, whose shape is suggestive of a snake (Wikipedia article).

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A subtle, treacherous, malicious person.

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A kind of firework with a serpentine motion.

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To wind or meander

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To encircle.

While fleeing from Aristaeus, she was bitten by a serpent and died.

You serpent! cried several voices.

In the former woman appears as the serpent whose trail is over all; in the latter, written twenty-five years after the event, she is the guardian angel abused and maltreated by men.

This work, generally known as the chronicle of Weihenstephan, gives among other legends a curious history of the emperor's passion for a dead woman, caused by a charm given to Charles by a serpent to whom he had rendered justice.

Yancey expertly caught the head of the serpent between the forks of a stick and bent over to pick it up.

The serpent, too, in mythology is a regular symbol of water.

The meaning of the name is uncertain; Wellhausen derives it from nan "Eve," or "serpent," in which case the Hivites were originally the snake clan; others explain it from the Arabic hayy, " family," as meaning "dwellers in (Bedouin) encampments."

There were two classes of gods - the first immortal, of whom Ndengei is the greatest, said to exist eternally in the form of a serpent, but troubling himself little with human or other affairs, and the others had usually only a local recognition.

The serpent tribe in India is numerous; they swarm in all the gardens, and intrude into the dwellings of the inhabitants, especially in the rainy season.

The commonest of these have the head of a fowl, and the arms and bust of a man, and terminate in the body and tail of a serpent.

Preval- worship still prevails largely in India, and a writer e p ee in in 1896 remarks that the previous census showed in varying the North-West Provinces over 25,000 Naga (serpent) forms. worshippers, 123,000 votaries of the snake-god Gaga, and, in the Punjab, some 35,000 special votaries of the snake godlings.'

The result is instructive when we turn to the numerous serpent myths and legends from the Old World and the New, to the stray notices in old writers, or to the fragmentary scraps of popular superstition everywhere.

Haunting buildings and famous ruins, gliding around pools, walls and trees, mysteriously disappearing below ground, the serpent and all its kind invariably arrested attention through its uncanny distinctiveness from bird or beast.

Here the serpent and its kind are frequently encountered.'

The serpent of the water is also the serpent of the great sea upon which the earth rested.'

Sometimes the serpent stands at the head of the human race as the mother of a11.2 This, following an old and still well supported interpretation of the name Eve (hawwah), was apparently also the belief of one branch of the Hebrews.3 There are many instances of tribes or clans named after the serpent.

As a creator of aught but romantic incident, indeed, Cooper's claims to renown must rest on the fine figure of the Leatherstocking, and, in a less degree, on that of his friend and companion, the Big Serpent.

There is no reason to doubt his sincerity, but he was coarse and intemperate - Froude roundly calls him a foul-mouthed ruffian - without the wisdom of the serpent or the harmlessness of the dove.

He has intimate relations in peace and war with a variety of animals whose habits are sometimes explained (like those of the serpent in Genesis) as the result of the curse of Heitsi Eibib.

Ra, the sun, fought the big serpent Apap, as Indra fought Vrittra.

The soma disagreed with Indra; part of it which was not drunk up became Vrittra the serpent, Indra's ' Hibbert Lectures, p. 230.

Why did various royal houses claim descent from the ant, the swan, the she-bear, the serpent, the horse and so forth ?

In Babylonian mythology "the old serpent goddess ` the lady Nina' was transformed into the embodiment of all that was hostile to the powers of heaven" (Sayce's Hibbert Lectures, p. 283), and was confounded with the dragon Tiamat, "a terrible monster, reappearing in the Old Testament writings as Rahab and Leviathan, the principle of chaos, the enemy of God and man" (Tennant's The Fall and Original Sin, p. 43), and according to Gunkel (Schopfung and Chaos, p. 383) "the original of the ` old serpent ' of Rev. xii.

In Egyptian mythology the serpent Apap with an army of monsters strives daily to arrest the course of the boat of the luminous gods.

I have bruised the serpent, I have passed.

On his death-bed he is said to have requested a friend to hide his body as soon as life was extinct, and, by putting a serpent in its place, induce his townsmen to suppose that he had been carried up to heaven.

He died from the bite of a serpent which sprang from the blood of the Gorgon Medusa.

On the traces of dragon and serpent myths in the Old Testament and their significance, see Gunkel, Schopfung and Chaos (1895) - a pioneering work of the highest merit - and Ency.

The drawings in Fergusson's work entitled Tree and Serpent Worship are very unsatisfactory, and his suggestion that the carvings illustrate tree and serpent worship is quite erroneous.

A Serpent was the Egyptian equivalent of Scorpio; the Arrow only of Sagittarius was retained; Capricornus became " Life," or a Mirror as an image of life; Aquarius survived as Water; Taurus, Virgo and Pisces remained unchanged.'

The characteristic Chinese mode of dividing the "yellow road " of the sun was, however, by the twelve "cyclical animals " - Rat, Ox, Tiger, Hare, Dragon or Crocodile, Serpent, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Hen, Dog, Pig.

In some circles the serpent was identified with Prunikos.

Written as this name is in pictures or rebus, it probably suggested the invention of the well-known legend of a prophecy that the war-god's temple should be built where a prickly pear was found growing on a rock, and perched on it an eagle holding a serpent; this legend is still commemorated on the coins of Mexico.

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.

By the conquest of Whydah the Dahomeyans were brought in contact with a people of serpent worshippers, and ended by adopting from them the cult which they at first despised.

At Whydah, the chief centre, there is a serpent temple, tenanted by some fifty snakes; every python of the danh-gbi kind must be treated with respect, and death is the penalty for killing one, even by accident.

In many parts of Africa the serpent is looked upon as the incarnation of deceased relatives; among the Amazulu, as among the Betsileo of Madagascar, certain species are assigned as the abode of certain classes; the Masai, on the other hand, regard each species as the habitat of a particular family of the tribe.

The tribes of Peru are said to have adored great snakes in the pre-Inca days; and in Chile the Araucanians made a serpent figure in their deluge myth.

Serpent cults were well known in ancient Europe; there does not, it is true, appear to be much ground for supposing that Aesculapius was a serpent-god in spite of his connexion with serpents.

On the other hand, we learn from Herodotus of the great serpent which defended the citadel of Athens; the Roman genius loci took the form of a serpent; a snake was kept and fed with milk in the temple of Potrimpos, an old Slavonic god.

Tradition says that one of the Gnostic sects known as the Ophites caused a tame serpent to coil round the sacramental bread and worshipped it as the representative of the Saviour.

For the serpent, see Ellis, Ewe-speaking Peoples, p. 54; Internat.

Here again, though to a less extent than in tree cults, the theriomorphic aspect recurs; in the north of Europe, in ancient Greece, in China, the water or river spirit is horse or bull-shaped; the water monster in serpent shape is even more widely found, but it is less strictly the spirit of the water.

It was her nature to take every week the form of a serpent from the waist below.

In the same fragment we read of the ruin of Azidahaka Mazainya, which name Darmesteter interprets in the Persian sources as the demon serpent, the sorcerer (Ormazd et Ahriman, Paris, 18 77, p. 1 57).

The statue of Serapis in the Serapeum of Alexandria was of purely Greek type and workmanship - a Hades or Pluto enthroned with a basket or corn measure on his head, a sceptre in his hand, Cerberus at his feet, and (apparently) a serpent.

This valley, however, is not only fortunate in possessing a noble artificial lake, but is protected by the massive walls of the Nagpathar range or Serpent rock, which forms a barrier against the sand.

Very careful and artistic representations of the stupa with its daghoba and interesting rail, pillars and sculptures will be found in Fergusson's Tree and Serpent Worship, and in his History of Indian Architecture (1876).

Olaf lashed his ships side to side, his own - the "Long Serpent," the finest-war-vessel as yet built in the north - being in the middle of the line, where her bows projected beyond the others.

In this way the Norse ships were carried one by one, till the "Long Serpent" alone was left.