kouros

American  

[koor-os] / ˈkʊər ɒs /

noun

Greek Antiquity.

kouroi plural

1. a sculptured representation of a young man, especially one produced prior to the 5th century b.c.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• kouroi
  plural

Etymology

Origin of kouros

1915–20; < Greek koûros, dialectal variant of kóros boy; cf. kore

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

kouros kouroi

But the most distinctive of the 55 antiquities returned to Greece by the Manhattan district attorney’s office this week was a 2,500-year-old sculpture of an athletic youth, known as a kouros, valued at $14 million.

From New York Times ● Feb. 24, 2022

According to prosecutors, Steinhardt purchased the kouros statue from dealer Robert Hecht in November 2000 for $2.3 million.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 23, 2022

The day will come — is it already here? — when a Kongo power figure is as familiar to a Met audiences as a Greek kouros, and “Gwandansu” helps explain what a “Madonna” means.

From New York Times ● Jan. 6, 2022

Sometimes I’m doing paintings and I could be doing anything, but it still looks like a kouros.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 27, 2021

And why was Thomas Hoving so sure, in those first two seconds, that the Getty’s kouros was a fake?

From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell

Leger's Three Women, 1921, is as self-consciously a masterpiece as any salon painting up to and including Seurat's Grande Jatte, and its nudes have the perfect dispassionateness of ancient kouroi.

From Time Magazine Archive

Headless and repetitious, they look "expressionist" but aren't: their true ancestors are ancient kouroi and Egyptian scribes planted on their plinths.

From Time Magazine Archive

Was the statue consistent with other known kouroi?

From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell

There are only about two hundred kouroi in existence, and most have been recovered badly damaged or in fragments from grave sites or archeological digs.

From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell