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

The artifacts included a sculpture of a young man from about 560 B.C., known as a kouros, that is worth $14 million, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said.

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

It’s like watching a chrysalis become a butterfly: The prototypes are impressive, but the kouros is timeless; he might be about to breathe, move, speak.

From New York Times ● May 17, 2015

When Federico Zeri and Evelyn Harrison and Thomas Hoving and Georgios Dontas—and all the others—looked at the kouros and felt an “intuitive repulsion,” they were absolutely right.

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

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

Was the statue consistent with other known kouroi?

From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell