SPARTAN • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Spartan

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/spˈɑrtən/ Listen

Spartan

adjective

Of or relating to or characteristic of Sparta or its people.

Resolute in the face of pain or danger or adversity.

Unsparing and uncompromising in discipline or judgment. Synonym: severe. "A hefty six-footer with a rather severe mien" , "A strict disciplinarian" , "A Spartan upbringing"

Practicing great self-denial. Synonyms: ascetic, ascetical, austere. "A desert nomad's austere life" , "A spartan diet" , "A spartan existence"

noun

A resident of Sparta.

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Etymology of 'Spartan'

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"Spartan" Quotes from Famous Books

... that she held in the monarchy of Sparta. We should touch upon the fact that the Athenian women were not only not in politics, but were not even in society, except a class which could be only fugitively mentioned, and we should freely admit that the Spartan women were the heroic inspiration of the men in all the virtues of patriotism at home as well as in the field. We should recognize the sort of middle station women held in the Roman republic, where they were not shut ...

— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... all to make a man, un homme, of him," he said to Glafira Petrovna, "and not only a man, but a Spartan." Ivan Petrovitch began carrying out his intentions by putting his son in a Scotch kilt; the twelve-year-old boy had to go about with bare knees and a plume stuck in his Scotch cap. The Swedish lady was replaced by a ...

— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... wore through the remaining hours of darkness upon the sodden hillside. Superlative Miss Gilchrist! Folded in the mantle of that Spartan dame; huddled upon a boulder, while the rain descended upon my bare head, and coursed down my nose, and filled my shoes, and insinuated a playful trickle down the ridge of my spine; I hugged the lacerating fox of self-reproach, and hugged it again, and set my ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... until we met again. And when the time should come for our resumption of those pursuits which (here a general depression set in all round), pursuits which, pursuits which;—then let us ever remember what was said by the Spartan General, in words too trite for repetition, at the battle it ...

— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... in Shiloh on the sacred festival; and David danced before the ark. Again, in Greece the like relation is everywhere seen; the original type being there, as probably in other cases, a simultaneous chanting and mimetic representation of the life and adventures of the god. The Spartan dances were accompanied by hymns and songs; and in general the Greeks had "no festivals or religious assemblies but what were accompanied with songs and dances"—both of them being forms of worship used before altars. Among the Romans, too, there were sacred dances: the ...

— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

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