nympholepsy
Americannoun
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nympholepsies
plural
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an ecstasy supposed by the ancients to be inspired by nymphs.
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a frenzy of emotion, as for something unattainable.
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of nympholepsy
1765–75; formed on nympholept, on the model of epilepsy
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.
The beautiful name of their malady was nympholepsy.
From Memoirs of My Dead Life by George (George Augustus) Moore
The side a man would take, struck, as your Sandro was, by a nympholepsy, or, as Lorenzo was, by the rhymer's appetite for wherewithal to sonnetteer?
From Earthwork out of Tuscany Being Impressions and Translations of Maurice Hewlett by Maurice Henry Hewlett
When the show was over he abandoned Miss Clampett on her door-step and went to his own boarding-house in a nympholepsy.
From We Can't Have Everything by Rupert Hughes
Through solitude this passion may be exalted into a frenzy like a nympholepsy.
From The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 by Alexander H. (Alexander Hay) Japp
De Quincey has done so in prose, for instance, and Lord Byron talks of 'The nympholepsy of a fond despair,' though he never was accused of being overridden by his Greek.
From The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II by Sir Frederic G. (Frederic George) Kenyon
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.
