EPITHET • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Epithet

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/ˈɛpəθˌɛt/ Listen

noun

Epithet n.

An adjective expressing some quality, attribute, or relation, that is properly or specially appropriate to a person or thing; as, a just man; a verdant lawn. "A prince (Henry III.) to whom the epithet "worthless" seems best applicable."

Term; expression; phrase. "Stuffed with epithets of war."

Synonyms: Epithet, Title. The name epithet was formerly extended to nouns which give a title or describe character (as the "epithet of liar"), but is now confined wholly to adjectives. Some rhetoricians, as Whately, restrict it still further, considering the term epithet as belonging only to a limited class of adjectives, viz., those which add nothing to the sense of their noun, but simply hold forth some quality necessarily implied therein; as, the bright sun, the lofty heavens, etc. But this restriction does not prevail in general literature. Epithet is sometimes confounded with application, which is always a noun or its equivalent.

verb

Epithet v. t. To describe by an epithet. (R.) "Never was a town better epitheted."

See images of 'Epithet'

Etymology of 'Epithet'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Epithet" Quotes from Famous Books

... them with the oracle which bade them "trust to walls of wood," showing them that walls of wood could signify nothing else but ships; and that the island of Salamis was termed in it not miserable or unhappy, but had the epithet of divine, for that it should one day be associated with a great good fortune of the Greeks. At length his opinion prevailed, and he obtained a decree that the city should be committed to the protection of Athena, "queen of Athens"; ...

— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... several States: 1st, that which related to the payment of debts; 2d, the provision for no future confiscations; 3d, the restitution of estates already confiscated. The first could not be denied. "Those," he said, "might be branded with the epithet of disorganizers, who threatened a dissolution of the Union in case the measures they dictated were not obeyed; and he knew, although he did not ascribe it to any member of the House, that men high in ...

— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... contradicteth his will, debaseth his authority, despiseth his sovereignty, upendeth his truth. There is a kind of infiniteness in it, nothing can express it but itself no name worse than itself to set it out, the apostle can get no other epithet to it, Rom. vii. 13, than "sinful" sin, so that it cometh in most direct opposition unto God. All that is in God, is God himself, and there is no name can express him sufficiently. If you say God, you say more than can be expressed by many thousand ...

— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... the well-known inscriptions on the rocks in the island of Thera in the Aegean sea there are many which record in deeply graven letters the friendship and devotion to each other of Spartan warrior-comrades; it seems strange at first to find how often such an epithet of praise occurs as Bathycles DANCES WELL, Eumelos is a PERFECT DANCER ([gr aristos orcestas]). One hardly in general expects one warrior to praise another for his dancing! But when one realizes what is really meant—namely the fitness of the loved comrade ...

— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... the resplendent: this is the epithet selected by the official nomenclators to describe the handsomest Dung-beetle of the pampas. The name is not at all exaggerated. Combining the fire of gems with metallic lustre, the insect, according to the incidence of the light, emits the ...

— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

More quotes...