bacchante
Americannoun
noun
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a priestess or female votary of Bacchus
-
a drunken female reveller
Etymology
Origin of bacchante
1790–1800; back formation from Latin bacchantēs, feminine plural of bacchāns bacchant; pronunciation with silent -e < French bacchante, feminine of bacchant bacchant
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"Like a bacchante after libations," she would stumble along, "nose and . . . forehead covered with yellow pollen, her hair in disorder and full of twigs, a bump here and a scratch there."
From Time Magazine Archive
"The computer has enshrined statistics," says M.I.T.'s Professor Harold A. "This is not a love-in," squawked a pimply bacchante, "it's a cash-in."
From Time Magazine Archive
In Paris she became a pupil, later a good friend of aging Auguste Rodin, won her first real fame with a bronze of Anna Pavlova as a dancing bacchante.
From Time Magazine Archive
"In truth," said Gringoire to himself, "she is a salamander, she is a nymph, she is a goddess, she is a bacchante of the Menelean Mount!"
From Notre-Dame De Paris by Hapgood, Isabel Florence
Miss Brannan, in a dashing red cap and jacket, danced like a bacchante on the roof, albeit manipulating large buckets of water.
From The Californians by Atherton, Gertrude Franklin Horn
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
