cicerone
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of cicerone
1720–30; Italian < Latin Cicerōnem, accusative of Cicerō Cicero, the guide being thought of as having the knowledge and eloquence of Cicero
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:
A surprising glimpse, a quarter-century into the millennium: The reassuring figure of the Anglican clergyman—enthusiast; amateur; generous of spirit, perhaps to a fault—acting cicerone among a dozen churches he’s identified as “buildings that made Christianity.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 19, 2025
A certified cicerone, co-owner Chris Elford also helped start the great beer joint Proletariat in New York’s East Village.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 19, 2016
So I called on a friend I will call Cicero to be my cicerone.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 15, 2016
He’s become a docent of decay, the cicerone of Newtown Creek.
From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2012
Groups of about twenty or thirty people were admitted at a time, at intervals of a quarter of an hour, and each group placed under the guidance of one of the workmen as cicerone.
From Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad with Tales and Miscellanies Now First Collected Vol. I (of 3) by Jameson, Mrs. (Anna)
For newcomers to Holy Mountain, its lineup is a good primer on what many cicerones consider to be one of the best breweries in the Northwest, if not the entire West Coast.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 5, 2023
Many, many times I've wondered what it would be like to go A group of foreign correspondents with Nazi cicerones last week completed a 2,500-mile tour of occupied Ukraine.
From Time Magazine Archive
I found myself, therefore, all at once in the midst of all kinds of home comforts, domesticities, and distractions, with delightful cicerones in host and hostess, and charming little companions in their two children.
From Holidays in Eastern France by Betham-Edwards, Matilda
The most discreet of cicerones is an intruder when we open our old favourite, and, without further magic, retire into that delicious nook of eighteenth-century society.
From Hours in a Library New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) by Stephen, Leslie, Sir
Among memorable cicerones in Italy was one whom we saw at Pisa, where we stopped on our way from Leghorn after our accident in the Maremma, and spent an hour in viewing the Quattro Fabbriche.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 119, September, 1867 by Various
Our ciceroni were much pained and scandalized at an indifference which exceeded all they had yet encountered in the matter-of-fact Signori Inglesi.
From Guy Livingstone; or, 'Thorough' by Lawrence, George A. (George Alfred)
The drivers of Niagara Falls are excellent ciceroni.
From By Water to the Columbian Exposition by Wisthaler, Johanna S.
But in walking about the museum with Mr. Bradshaw, he was the most brilliant of ciceroni.
From The Emancipated by Gissing, George
But in any case Herodotus can only have seen fragments, easily misinterpreted, easily explained by local ciceroni as relics of something quite unlike the facts.
From Ancient Town-Planning by Haverfield, F. (Francis)
He neither took any rest himself nor allowed others to do so; he exhausted all his ciceroni, always repeating, "I must see it."
From The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 by Rudd, John
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.
