hippodame

English

Etymology

By confusion with hippotame.

Noun

hippodame (plural hippodames)

1. (obsolete, rare, mythology) A sea horse or hippocampus.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     on every syde / They trembling stood, and made a long broad dyke, / That his swift charet might have passage wyde / Which foure great Hippodames did draw in temewise tyde.

   • 1851, William Wilberforce Lord, Christ in Hades:

     Nor did less tumult swell the late defeat Of monstrous Dagon, from whom, worse deformed With hippodame and kraken, self -assumed, So spirits can, turned infantry and steed, Nor chose the ambush of his doubtful shape.