Cyclops
noun
a member of a family of giants having a single round eye in the middle of the forehead.
Cyclops
American
[sahy-klops]
/ ˈsaɪ klɒps /
noun
-
Cyclopes
plural
-
Classical Mythology. a member of a family of giants having a single round eye in the middle of the forehead.
-
(lowercase) a freshwater copepod of the genus Cyclops, having a median eye in the front of the head.
cyclops
1
British
/ ˈsaɪklɒps /
noun
Cyclops
2
British
/ ˈsaɪklɒps /
noun
Cyclops
Cultural
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of Cyclops
< Greek Kýklōps, literally, round-eye, equivalent to kýkl ( os ) a circle, round + ṓps eye
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:
Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Cyclops is one of the leaders and founding members of the X-Men.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 6, 2026
But the Cyclops is one-eyed, slow-moving and tactically naive, like the English national team, and is eventually defeated by firm managerial leadership and guile.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 27, 2026
It recounts the titular hero's 10-year quest to return home from war and includes some of the most famous Ancient Greek myths, including one-eyed monster Cyclops and the Sirens.
From Barron's ● Jul. 10, 2026
“For some, a war becomes home,” he says at one point, his line readings so pungent you’ll barely miss the excitement of a Cyclops or a Calypso.
From New York Times ● Dec. 5, 2024
We could’ve been there all night while she tried to spell Cyclops.
From "The Sea of Monsters" by Rick Riordan
According to the show's curators, elements of Flaxman's sketches can be seen in Turner's painting called Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus – Homer's Odyssey, including outlines of horses in the sunset and the shadow of a cyclops.
From BBC ● Sep. 18, 2026
Damon’s Odysseus captures all the heroic arrogance, bravery and selfish stupidity of an action-flick brawler who would shoot a giant cyclops in the eye as he’s making his escape, just because.
From Salon ● Aug. 2, 2026
New research suggests that far back in evolutionary history, one of our earliest relatives had a single eye, much like a tiny cyclops, positioned on top of its head.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 27, 2026
The EU says a primitive form of feta is mentioned in the Odyssey, when the hero of the ancient epic takes cheese from the cave of the cyclops Polyphemus.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 6, 2026
When she looked up, the magnifying glass enlarged her right eye, giving her the terrifying look of a cyclops.
From "Not Nothing" by Gayle Forman
Homer’s “The Odyssey” follows Odysseus, a Greek king trying to get home after the Trojan War, a journey interrupted by Cyclopes, sirens, shipwrecks and gods with grudges.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 1, 2026
For the Greeks, the Black Sea was the edge of the known world, inhabited by, as he writes in the book, “cannibals, hellhounds, man-slaughtering Amazons, dwarves mounted on flying cranes, Cyclopes, lice-eaters, and werewolves.”
From Washington Post ● Jul. 29, 2022
For Halloween that year, the Latin pop star J Balvin gave a campy concert dressed as a green-haired Frankenstein’s monster, backed by dancers in costume as ghosts and zombie Cyclopes.
From New York Times ● Mar. 2, 2022
It is strange that Knausgaard, given his thematic fixations, fails to mention that the Cyclopes were, in Greek mythology, wall builders, responsible for constructing fortifications on the Peloponnese.
From New York Times ● Dec. 31, 2020
Immediately the Cyclopes came forward and made two lines from the thrones to the door—an aisle for me to walk through.
From "The Last Olympian" by Rick Riordan
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.
