Orphic
Americanadjective
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of or relating to Orpheus or Orphism
-
(sometimes not capital) mystical or occult
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of Orphic
1670–80; < Greek Orphikós (cognate with Latin Orphicus ), equivalent to Orph ( eús ) Orpheus + -ikos -ic
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.
And it’s a clumsy one, attempting in the third act to weave aria pauses into a breakneck pace and an abrupt, Orphic turn.
From New York Times ● Jun. 26, 2022
But the most important thing — an Orphic struggle if ever there was one — was not to look back.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 17, 2021
Aucoin first explored the subject in a 2014 piece for countertenor, violin and orchestra called “The Orphic Moment.”
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 29, 2020
But some novelists have turned to music not to envy its Orphic power but to prod a bit dubiously at the very idea of attention as we’ve come to conceive of it.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 27, 2015
The Orphic hymn, in dark numbers, had pronounced the sky and the sea, earth the universal and fire the immortal, to be the limbs of Pan.
From Aspects and Impressions by Edmund Gosse
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.
