Briareus

British  

/ braɪˈɛərɪəs /

noun

1. Greek myth a giant with a hundred arms and fifty heads who aided Zeus and the Olympians against the Titans

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Other Word Forms

• Briarean
  adjective

Example Sentences

So does the sun himself upon a vaster arena and before a greater spectator, like another Briareus; holding out his seventeen planets, and nobody knows how many comets, in his hundred hands.

From Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 by Various

Bibliomania has as many heads as the famed Briareus; but it seldom lifts more than two or three at once.

From The Book-Collector A General Survey of the Pursuit and of those who have engaged in it at Home and Abroad from the Earliest Period to the Present Time by Hazlitt, William Carew

The river spread out as many arms as Briareus; short, stubby creeks, slow waters prone to overflow and creep, between high knotted roots of live-oak and cypress, into thickets of bog myrtle.

From The Long Roll by Johnston, Mary

There were three Giants, Briareus, Cottus, and Gyges, who each possessed a hundred hands and fifty heads, and were known collectively by the name of the Hecatoncheires, which signified hundred-handed.

From Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome by Berens, E.M.

In this part Giulio painted Briareus in a dark cavern, almost covered with vast fragments of mountains, and the other Giants all crushed and some dead beneath the ruins of the mountains.

From Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi by De Vere, Gaston du C.