sirenic
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
- sirenically adverb
Etymology
Origin of sirenic
Explanation
Music or works of art that are sirenic are so beautiful that they captivate your attention and almost put you in a trance, such that you want to keep listening or looking. Sirenic comes from the noun siren. While we don't think of sirens on emergency vehicles as particularly beautiful sounds, the word siren comes from the Greek myth of the sea nymphs, called sirens, who were part-woman and part-bird. Sailors on ships passing nearby would be lured toward the sirens' beautiful, seductive singing, and the sailors' ships were then smashed on the rocks. Our emergency sound, even though not beautiful, is called a siren because it captures people's attention.
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.
It’s sirenic, a call to blindness, a “happy” filter placed on a world that is often good but frequently not.
From Newsweek • Feb. 27, 2015
Norns and Rhinemaidens have sirenic charm and character.
From The Guardian • May 22, 2010
He has also taken soulful-eyed, sirenic Kay Francis, given her her best part for many a long picture.
From Time Magazine Archive
Yet day by day he had fought back that sirenic call.
From Phantom Wires A Novel by Brown, Arthur William
One instinctively pictures a svelte form, a "face that launched a thousand ships," and all the rest of the sirenic paraphernalia that instinctively attach themselves to one's mental vision of a wholesale fracturer of hearts.
From Superwomen by Terhune, Albert Payson
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.
