Linus
1 Americannoun
noun
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Classical Mythology.
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a musician and poet, the inventor of melody and rhythm, of whom various stories are told: often identified, through his untimely death, with the harvesting or withering of crops and vegetation.
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Also called Linus song. a dirge: originally sung in western Asia to mourn the death of crops being harvested, later sung to mourn the death of Linus or that of Adonis.
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a male given name.
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.
Linus Pauling was a chemist from the United States who won two Nobel Prizes.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 27, 2026
"We can't even fill the coffee cups to the brim or they spill," his son Linus, 19, added with an air of amused exasperation.
From Barron's ● Aug. 15, 2026
“There was a teacher in Bell County, just an innocent teacher who put up a Linus cartoon over Christmas that said ‘Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.’
From Salon ● Aug. 14, 2026
Linus planned to make the trip this summer but says a series of "concerning" events, documented in a series of emails shared with Newsbeat, raised his suspicions.
From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026
Even if Linus was somewhere near the right structure, the odds seemed against his getting near the secret of gene replication.
From "Double Helix" by James D. Watson
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.
