Stygian
Americanadjective
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of or relating to the river Styx or to Hades.
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dark or gloomy.
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infernal; hellish.
adjective
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of or relating to the river Styx
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literary
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dark, gloomy, or hellish
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completely inviolable, as a vow sworn by the river Styx
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Other Word Forms
- trans-Stygian adjective
Etymology
Origin of Stygian
1560–70; < Latin Stygi ( us ) < Greek Stýgios ( Styg-, stem of Stýx Styx + -ios adj. suffix) + -an
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.
A subtle reference to Serra’s father, a pipe fitter at a shipyard near San Francisco, it also puts us in mind of Charon’s ferry, shuttling souls across Stygian waters.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 31, 2025
He parked next to a dimly lit footbridge, which wobbled with our passage above a Stygian chasm.
From Washington Post • Apr. 22, 2022
Reynolds helped supply Melville with a more Stygian idea, by exhorting his men to attack Mocha Dick as “though he were Beelzebub himself!” — a demon rather than a whale.
From New York Times • May 2, 2020
The summer-stock theatricality of finding each other dissipated as the pair walked along the museum’s Stygian passageways.
From The New Yorker • May 8, 2017
He sat back in his leather aviator jacket, his black T-shirt and jeans, that wicked silver skull ring on his finger, and the Stygian sword at his side.
From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan
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.
