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• Pleiad
  Pleiad

  noun

  any of the Pleiades.
• pleiad
  pleiad

  noun

  a brilliant or talented group, esp one with seven members

Pleiad

American  

[plee-uhd, plahy-uhd] / ˈpli əd, ˈplaɪ əd /

noun

1. any of the Pleiades.

2. French Pléiade.  a group of seven French poets of the latter half of the 16th century.

3. (usually lowercase) any group of eminent or brilliant persons or things, especially when seven in number.

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Pleiad ¹ British  

/ ˈplaɪəd /

noun

1. one of the Pleiades (stars or daughters of Atlas)

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pleiad ² British  

/ ˈplaɪəd /

noun

1. a brilliant or talented group, esp one with seven members

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Etymology

Origin of pleiad

C16: originally French Pléiade, name given by Pierre de Ronsard to himself and six other poets after a group of Alexandrian Greek poets who were called this after the _Pleiades ¹

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

Pleiad pleiad

John Rogers' Lost Pleiad shows American sculpture at its most blatantly sentimental.

From Time Magazine Archive

According to the Greek myth, then, the seven stars of the Pleiad were seven maidens, daughters of the Giant Atlas.

From Custom and Myth New Edition by Andrew Lang

Pleiad, plī′ad, n. one of the seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione, after death changed into stars:—pl.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 3 of 4: N-R) by Various

In these countries, as elsewhere, stories were told to account for the "lost Pleiad", a fact which suggests that primitive men were more constant observers of the heavenly bodies than might otherwise be supposed.

From Myths of Babylonia and Assyria by Donald Alexander Mackenzie

Our Father's House is ours in trust, From Washington's own line; The Union knows no Pleiad lost For "auld lang syne."

From Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive by Alf Burnett

She produced an admirable pleiad of poets and prose writers of high merit.

From Initiation into Literature by Sir Home Gordon, Bart.

The mistake, meantime, I believe to be, not in the Grecian pleiad of sages, but in ourselves, who have falsely apprehended them.

From Theological Essays and Other Papers — Volume 2 by Thomas De Quincey

They were, pre-eminently, excellent describers of states of the soul, admirable psychological moralists and they were the ancestors of the highly remarkable pleiad of English psychologists of the nineteenth century.

From Initiation into Philosophy by Émile Faguet

The Minister said that Victor Hugo, while living, figured in the glorious pleiad of great poets—with Corneille, Molière, Racine, and Voltaire.

From Victor Hugo: His Life and Works by G. Barnett Smith

It must not be forgotten that it was by the most extravagant largesses, by making a traffic of everything, that he encouraged the pleiad of artists who shed such glory upon his name.

From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 08 The Later Renaissance: from Gutenberg to the Reformation by Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne