bacchante

[ buh-kan-tee, -kahn-, buh-kant, -kahnt ]

noun

a female bacchant.

Origin of bacchante

1790–1800; back formation from Latin bacchantēs, feminine plural of bacchānsbacchant; pronunciation with silent -e<French bacchante, feminine of bacchant bacchant

Also called maenad, menad, Thyiad.

Words Nearby bacchante

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use bacchante in a sentence

At the center of the sanctuary stood Perrette the Ribald, her hair disheveled like a bacchante's.
The Pilgrim's Shell or Fergan the Quarryman | Eugne Sue
Cagliostro looked with horror upon the ashes of the bacchante.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 | Various
She was attired like a bacchante, with bands of fur in her hair, topped by bunches of gold grapes.
Lazarre | Mary Hartwell Catherwood
A very beautiful Etruscan mirror with Bacchus, or a bacchante, riding on a panther upon the cover.
The Story of Perugia | Margaret Symonds
The arms of a sweetly pretty bacchante are entwined round the neck of the maudlin reveller.
Rowlandson the Caricaturist. First Volume | Joseph Grego

British Dictionary definitions for bacchante

bacchante

/ (bəˈkæntɪ) /

nounplural bacchantes (bəˈkæntɪz)

a priestess or female votary of Bacchus
a drunken female reveller

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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