caryatid
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of caryatid
1555–65; < Latin Caryātides (singular Caryātis ) < Greek Karyā́tides columns shaped like women, literally, women of Karýai, Laconia
Vocabulary lists containing caryatid
Ancient Greece - Middle School and High School
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Art History
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Example Sentences
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See Examples For:
The single square column features crouching figures in the capital who seem to be holding up the arch, a playful evocation of the classical figure of the caryatid or herm.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 21, 2026
In ancient Greece, the culture where male athletes were so highly prized as heroic citizens, a caryatid was a draped female figure used instead of a column as an architectural support.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 15, 2023
Sometimes a caryatid has been compared to the unseen slave who carried society’s burdens.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 15, 2023
You may think that David Cameron's well-heeled colleagues would give him a marble caryatid bought from the Frieze Masters art fair for his birthday.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 12, 2012
“A caryatid wouldn’t be strong enough for Dad.”
From "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls
He paused in the sea of green moonlight before the gold threshold of the Palais du Danse, whose caryatides were faun-eyed Mænads and Ægipans.
From Just Around the Corner Romance en casserole by Hurst, Fannie
The drawing is in his best manner, the frame-border of caryatides in camaieu is of a richness of ornamentation in keeping with the rest of the volume.
From Illuminated Manuscripts by Bradley, John William
Art blended so cunningly with Nature one might almost mistake marble Venus for live goddess or flesh-and-blood naiads of the lake for carved caryatides.
From Orphans of the Storm by MacMahon, Henry
The feet, as in all the beds of the Empire, consisted of caryatides and sphinxes; it gleamed with richly-gilt eagles, billing like turtle doves, perhaps an emblem of love under the Empire.
From The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine by Heine, Heinrich
Sometimes the frieze is omitted, as in the entablature of the portico of the caryatides of the Erechtheum.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 6 "English Language" to "Epsom Salts" by Various
A critic of the day hailed the bravura Hunt caryatids as “full of sentiment, showing a refined imagination, a scholar’s grasp of the requirements and an artist’s appreciation of fitness.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 8, 2026
In it, she and Cardi B dress in Grecian goddess-inspired dresses, dance in front of classically inspired statuary, wear headdresses that evoke caryatids and transform into Grecian vases.
From Salon ● Sep. 4, 2021
He sat in a ostentatious Greek-style hall bedecked with four caryatids, the draped female figures used in columns — a style first seen in Delphi 2 ½ millennia ago.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 12, 2019
He called them the "caryatids of that great and marvellous epoch that was ours".
From BBC ● Feb. 24, 2016
Small kids were perched on tabletops because there weren't enough chairs, and the Epiphany sixth graders stood like caryatids leaning against three of the four walls of the room.
From "The View From Saturday" by E.L. Konigsburg
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.
