Acherontic
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]- acherontic
- acherontical (obsolete)
Adjective
[edit]Acherontic
- Of, pertaining to or resembling Acheron (one of the rivers located in the underworld according to ancient Greek mythology).
- Coordinate terms: Cocytean, Lethean, Phlegethontic, Stygian
- 1607, Thomas Dekker, chapter 4, in A Knights Conjuring[2], London: William Barley:
- It was a Comedy, to see what a crowding (as if it had bene at a newe Play,) there was vpon the Acheronticque Strond,
- 1726, anonymous author, The British Apollo[3], 3rd edition, London: Theodore Sanders, page 106:
- Fierce earthquakes tear the world, the heavens bow,
A passage opens to the shades below:
From acherontick shores black fiends ascend,
- 1867, Thomas Carlyle, chapter 10, in Shooting Niagara: and After?[4], London: Chapman and Hall, page 53:
- Is Free Industry free to convert all our rivers into Acherontic sewers; England generally into a roaring sooty smith’s forge?
- 1987, Paul Breslin, chapter 8, in The Psycho-Political Muse[5], University of Chicago Press, page 179:
- Although Wright’s underwater man in Venice may remind us of the ghosts of the drowned in the Ohio River, this Italian fantasy is more benign; the canal is not like the Acherontic Ohio […]
- (figurative) Of or pertaining to hell.
- 1623, George Langford, Search the Scriptures, London: John Clarke, Section 7, p. 43,[6]
- How did those Aegyptians storme, when Moses and Aaron, Crumwell and Cranmer came, to deliuer Gods Israel, from that Acheronticall ignorance?
- 1638, Thomas Herbert, Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique[7], London: Jacob Blome and Richard Bishop, page 17:
- Both sex, hideously cut, and gash, and pink in sundry works, their browes, nose, cheeks, armes, brest, back, belly, thighes and legges in Acherontick order: in a word, are so deformed, that if they had studied to become antick, they might be praised for invention.
- 1895, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure[8], New York: Harper, published 1896, Part 6, Chapter 4, p. 428:
- […] they proceeded through the fog like Acherontic shades for a long while, without sound or gesture.
- 1623, George Langford, Search the Scriptures, London: John Clarke, Section 7, p. 43,[6]
- (figurative) Lacking joy and comfort[1]; nearing death.
- 1599, John Weever, Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut, and Newest Fashion, London: Thomas Bushell, The Thirde Weeke, Epig. 7,[9]
- Depart to blacke nights Acheronticke Cell,
- 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Henry Cripps, Part 3, Section 3, Member 4, Subsection 2, p. 701,[10]
- […] it is most odious, when an old Acheronticke dizard, that hath one foote in his graue, shall flicker after a young wench, what can be more detestable.
- 1860, Walter Thornbury, chapter 9, in Turkish Life and Character,[11], volume 1, London: Smith, Elder, page 213:
- I see no owls, though I am told that at night they fill these Acherontic woods with demon hooting […]
- 1947, Frank Waters, chapter 10, in The Yogi of Cockroach Court[12], Chicago: Sage Books, published 1972, page 225:
- It was twilight in the streets. On every corner glowed lights from doors and dusty windows. Acherontic figures lounged by lazily or sat against the walls.
- 2001, Timothy West, chapter 22, in A Moment Towards the End of the Play…[13], London: Nick Hern Books, page 176:
- In Manchester, our designer Roy Stonehouse had built the dark lanes of his [Dickens’] Acherontic township on the low-lying land behind Water Street […]
- 1599, John Weever, Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut, and Newest Fashion, London: Thomas Bushell, The Thirde Weeke, Epig. 7,[9]
Translations
[edit]pertaining to or resembling Acheron
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References
[edit]- ^ Thomas Blount, Glossographia, London: George Sawbridge, 1661.[1]