thyrsus
Americannoun
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Botany. a thyrse.
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Greek Antiquity. a staff tipped with a pine cone and sometimes twined with ivy and vine branches, borne by Dionysus and his votaries.
noun
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Greek myth a staff, usually one tipped with a pine cone, borne by Dionysus (Bacchus) and his followers
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a variant spelling of thyrse
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of thyrsus
1585–95; < Latin < Greek thýrsos Bacchic staff, stem of plant
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.
See Examples For:
In last year's district finals, Melody, a straight A student at Pittsburgh's Carrick Junior High, muffed thyrsus, placed second.
From Time Magazine Archive
Crowned with a chaplet of Ghanna leaves and with his knob-kerrie for thyrsus, he might have easily passed for a youthful but disreputable Dionysus.
From Lodges in the Wilderness by Scully, W. C. (William Charles)
A little Watteau shepherd in blue-and-silver, like moonlight, dashed his crook against the thyrsus of a Bacchante crowned with grapes, who wore a leopard's skin over her left side, and buskins with gold ribbons.
From Sentimental Education Vol 1 by Flaubert, Gustave
She presses to her bosom the infant Iacchus, crowned with the eternal ivy, and bearing in his hand the thyrsus.
From Museum of Antiquity A Description of Ancient Life by Haines, T. L. (Thomas Louis)
A plant extends along part of another compartment, possibly allusive to their medical virtues; and, to show that Bacchus was not forgotten, beneath lies a thyrsus with a double head.
From Old and New London Volume I by Thornbury, Walter
The thudding of their hooves shook the ground, and the clash of their timbrels and the rustling of their thyrsi filled the air.
From Widdershins by Onions, Oliver [pseud.]
Also the border of vine-leaves and crossed thyrsi; though that, to be sure, is usual enough.
From The Westcotes by Quiller-Couch, Arthur Thomas, Sir
A pink house with green shutters, half-hidden amid the sombre foliage, appears at the end of an alley of lilacs, "which sway in the spring under the weight of their balmy thyrsi."
From Fabre, Poet of Science by Miall, Bernard
But she cried out, O my fleet hounds, we are hunted by these men; but follow me, follow, armed with thyrsi in your hands.
From The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. by Euripides
On each side of the arch other girls stood by threes, while a row of six was arranged across the gate of the arch with thyrsi in their hands.
From Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century by Paston, George
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.
