Odysseus

American  

[oh-dis-ee-uhs, oh-dis-yoos] / oʊˈdɪs i əs, oʊˈdɪs yus /

noun

Classical Mythology.

1. king of Ithaca; son of Laertes; one of the heroes of the Iliad and protagonist of the Odyssey: shrewdest of the Greek leaders in the Trojan War.

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Odysseus British  

/ əˈdiːsɪəs /

noun

1. Roman name: Ulysses.  Greek myth one of the foremost of the Greek heroes at the siege of Troy, noted for his courage and ingenuity. His return to his kingdom of Ithaca was fraught with adventures in which he lost all his companions and he was acknowledged by his wife Penelope only after killing her suitors

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Odysseus Cultural  

1. A Greek hero in the Trojan War (see also Trojan War). Odysseus helped bring about the fall of Troy by conceiving the ruse of the Trojan horse. After Troy was ruined, Odysseus wandered for ten years trying to return home, having many adventures along the way. (See Circe, Cyclops, Penelope, Scylla and Charybdis, and Sirens.)

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Discover More

The story of Odysseus' journey home is told in the Odyssey of Homer. By extension, an “odyssey” is any long or difficult journey or transformation.

Example Sentences

Odysseus touched down in the Malapert A crater, some 300 kilometers from the moon’s south pole, becoming the first commercial lander to touch down on the moon.

From MarketWatch • Mar. 31, 2026

Intuitive made news when its Odysseus spacecraft landed on the moon in February 2024.

From Barron's • Mar. 19, 2026

Joyce’s Leopold Bloom and Woolf’s Peter Walsh “are wanderers like Odysseus. Molly Bloom and Clarissa Dalloway are the women to whom Bloom and Peter return, as Odysseus returns to Penelope.”

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 14, 2025

Intuitive Machines successfully landed a craft called Odysseus on the Moon in February last year, but it tipped over during the descent, meaning not all the scientific work could be carried out.

From BBC • Mar. 6, 2025

If Odysseus was dead, it would certainly be well for her to marry the richest of these men and the most liberal.

From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton