thyrsus
Americannoun
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thyrsi
plural
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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
The figure of the god stands upon a pillar of three stones, and it bears a thyrsus from which depend two ribbons.
From Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism With an Essay on Baal Worship, On The Assyrian Sacred "Grove," And Other by Thomas Inman
The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful and venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned Beauty.
From The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire with an Introductory Preface by James Huneker by Charles Baudelaire
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 T. L. (Thomas Louis) Haines
Satyrs, fauns and bacchantes saluted him, tumbled him, buffeted him: one snatched off his scarlet fillet and crowned him with a wreath of grape-leaves, while a second thrust a thyrsus into his hand.
From Saul of Tarsus A Tale of the Early Christians by Elizabeth Miller
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 Bernard Miall
In a patch of rusty-gum forest we found Acacia equisetifolia, and the dwarf Grevillea of the upper Lynd in blossom; the thyrsi of scarlet flowers of the latter were particularly beautiful.
From Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia : from Moreton Bay to Port Essington, a distance of upwards of 3000 miles, during the years 1844-1845 by Ludwig Leichhardt
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
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 Oliver [pseud.] Onions
Also the border of vine-leaves and crossed thyrsi; though that, to be sure, is usual enough.
From The Westcotes by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
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.
