Sybaritic
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Learned borrowing from Latin Sybarīticus (“of or pertaining to Sybaris or its inhabitants”) + English -ic (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’, forming adjectives from nouns). Sybarīticus is derived from Ancient Greek Συβαρῑτικός (Subarītikós), from Σῠβᾰρῑ́της (Subarī́tēs, “(noun) inhabitant of Sybaris; (adjective) decadent; self-indulgent”)[1][2] (from Σῠ́βᾰρῐς (Súbaris, “Sybaris”) + -ῑ́της (-ī́tēs, suffix forming demonyms)) + -κός (-kós, suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’, forming adjectives). The English word is analysable as Sybarite (“inhabitant of Sybaris”) + -ic. Sybaris, a city of Magna Graecia (the coastal parts of Sicily and southern Italy once colonized by Greek settlers), was known for its wealth and the excesses and hedonism of its inhabitants.
Adjective
[edit]Sybaritic (comparative more Sybaritic, superlative most Sybaritic)
- Of or relating to Sybaris or its inhabitants.
- 1777, Richard Bentley, Samuel Salter, A Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris: With an Answer to the Objections of the Hon. Charles Boyle, page 49:
- This last passage of Jamblichuns, where he intimates that Cyclon's conspiracy came quickly after the Sybaritic war, being not only corrupted in original, but most miserably handled in the Latin translation; […]
- Alternative letter-case form of sybaritic (“of or having the qualities of a sybarite (“a person devoted to luxury and pleasure”); dedicated to excessive comfort and enjoyment; decadent, hedonistic, self-indulgent”)
- 1840, F[rederick] M[arryat], “How to Write a Romance”, in Olla Podrida. […], volume III, London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans, […], →OCLC, page 252:
- [S]he, for whom attendant maidens had smoothed the Sybaritic sheet of finest texture, […]
References
[edit]- ^ “Sybaritic, adj.”, in OED Online
, Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2022.
- ^ “Sybaritic, adj.”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present, reproduced from Stuart Berg Flexner, editor in chief, Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.: Random House, 1993, →ISBN.
Further reading
[edit]
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *-kos
- English terms borrowed from Latin
- English learned borrowings from Latin
- English terms derived from Latin
- English terms derived from Ancient Greek
- English terms suffixed with -ic
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- English terms with quotations
- English terms derived from toponyms
- en:Happiness