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Hippocrene

[hip-uh-kreen, hip-uh-kree-nee]
noun
  1. a spring on Mount Helicon sacred to the Muses and regarded as a source of poetic inspiration.
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Related formsHip·po·cre·ni·an, adjective
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Examples from the Web for hippocrene

Historical Examples of hippocrene

  • Hippocrene, the spring of the Muses, said to have been created by the hoof-beat of Pegasus.

    The Last Poems of Ovid

    Ovid

  • That is to drink of the fountain of Hippocrene, to write verse.

  • Mountains of cheese, rivers of fat broth, are their Helicon and Hippocrene.

  • I never saw him again, and a few years after he was drowned, not in the fountain of Hippocrene, but in the Guadalquivir.

    The Memoires of Casanova, Complete

    Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

  • Such is the effect of too copious draughts from that Hippocrene which alternately discharges cock-tail and mint-julep.

British Dictionary definitions for hippocrene

Hippocrene

noun
  1. a spring on Mount Helicon in Greece, said to engender poetic inspiration
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Derived FormsHippocrenian, adjective

Word Origin for Hippocrene

C17: via Latin from Greek hippos horse + krēnē spring
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

Word Origin and History for hippocrene

Hippocrene

fount on Mount Helicon, sacred to the Muses, from Greek Hippokrene, literally "horse's fountain," from hippos "horse" + krene "fountain."

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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper