bacchant
Americannoun
-
bacchants,
plural
-
bacchantes
plural
-
a priest, priestess, or votary of Bacchus; bacchanal.
-
a drunken reveler.
adjective
noun
-
a priest or votary of Bacchus
-
a drunken reveller
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of bacchant
First recorded in 1690–1700, bacchant is from the Latin word bacchant- (stem of bacchāns, present participle of bacchārī to revel). See Bacchus, -ant
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.
See Examples For:
Everyone who has ever seen a Jack Lemmon movie will instantly surmise that the model account exec is a three-button bacchant, and so he is.
From Time Magazine Archive
They also show off by picking up guitars and microphones and dancing like prairie bacchantes.
From New York Times ● Apr. 8, 2019
The tension is not in the contest but in the axiomatic revelation uttered by the chorus of the bacchantes: "Knowledge is not wisdom."
From Time Magazine Archive
I have seen quiet Copenhageners, with Danish autumnal coolness in their veins, become political bacchantes at his playing.
From Franz Liszt by James Huneker
Frequently he had companions, three or four schützen and twice as many bacchantes, the former performing, in fact, in rough style, the part of fags to the older students.
From Count Ulrich of Lindburg A Tale of the Reformation in Germany by William Henry Giles Kingston
Then occurs another outflow from the thyrsus and cup, and another round of the bacchantes to the sound of drums and cymbals.
From Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 by Various
The influence, direct and indirect, of these German philosophers reached far beyond the narrow circle of the bacchants or even the wandbearers of idealism.
From The Idea of Progress An inguiry into its origin and growth by J. B. (John Bagnell) Bury
In their other religious festivals also, choruses of fauns and bacchants chaunted songs and held up individuals to public ridicule.
From The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 by S. C. (Stephen Cullen) Carpenter
He painted all sorts of subjects, but was seen at his best in mythological scenes with groups of drunken satyrs and bacchants, surrounded by a close-placed landscape.
From A Text-Book of the History of Painting by John Charles Van Dyke
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.
