thyrsus

American  

[thur-suhs] / ˈθɜr səs /

noun

• thyrsi
  plural

1. Botany. a thyrse.

2. Greek Antiquity. a staff tipped with a pine cone and sometimes twined with ivy and vine branches, borne by Dionysus and his votaries.

---

thyrsus British  

/ ˈθɜːsəs /

noun

1. Greek myth a staff, usually one tipped with a pine cone, borne by Dionysus (Bacchus) and his followers

2. a variant spelling of thyrse

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• thyrsi
  plural

---

Etymology

Origin of thyrsus

1585–95; < Latin < Greek thýrsos Bacchic staff, stem of plant

---

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

thyrsus thyrsi

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

Bacchus is generally represented as a handsome youth, crowned with ivy or grape leaves and clusters, bearing the thyrsus, an ivy-circled wand, as scepter, and riding in a chariot drawn by panthers or leopards.

From Myths of Greece and Rome Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art by H. A. (H?l?ne Adeline) Guerber

Drunken Bacchantes danced before them, waving the thyrsus, hand in hand with fauns and satyrs; they encircled a triumphal car, drawn by spotted lynxes.

From Psyche by Louis Couperus

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 Walter Thornbury

Of the other two, which are almost effaced, one represents an aged Faun, holding in his hands a thyrsus and a vase; the other a young woman conversing with an African slave.

From Museum of Antiquity A Description of Ancient Life by T. L. (Thomas Louis) Haines

The walls of the room were appropriately enough decorated with capering bacchanals squeezing bunches of purple grapes and flourishing their thyrsi about in a very tipsy fashion.

From Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines by Henry Vizetelly

Thus, above the great marble mantel,—carved with thyrsi, and supported by proud deep-bosomed caryatides,—you will find burly Sebastian Musgrave, "the Speaker," an all-overbearing man even on canvas.

From The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck A Comedy of Limitations by James Branch Cabell

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

It traversed Thrace and Asia, reveling in company with four hundred male attendants, who were equipped with thyrsi and fawn-skins and did no harm.

From Dio's Rome, Volume 6 An Historical Narrative Originally Composed in Greek During The Reigns of Septimius Severus, Geta and Caracalla, Macrinus, Elagabalus And Alexander Severus by Herbert Baldwin Foster

And of the pillars four were made to resemble palm-trees, and they had in the centre a representation of thyrsi.

From The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned of Athen?us by Athen?us

Random Word

Spin the wheel and learn a new word!

---