Acherontic
English
Alternative forms
- acherontic
- acherontical (obsolete)
Adjective
Acherontic
- Of, pertaining to or resembling Acheron (one of the rivers located in the underworld according to ancient Greek mythology).
- Coordinate terms: Cocytean, Lethean, Phlegethontic, Stygian
- 1607, Thomas Dekker, A Knights Conjuring, London: William Barley, Chapter 4,
- It was a Comedy, to see what a crowding (as if it had bene at a newe Play,) there was vpon the Acheronticque Strond,
- 1726, anonymous, The British Apollo, London: Theodore Sanders, 3rd edition, p. 106,
- Fierce earthquakes tear the world, the heavens bow,
- A passage opens to the shades below:
- From acherontick shores black fiends ascend,
- 1867, Thomas Carlyle, Shooting Niagara: and After? London: Chapman and Hall, Chapter 10, p. 53,
- Is Free Industry free to convert all our rivers into Acherontic sewers; England generally into a roaring sooty smith’s forge?
- 1987, Paul Breslin, The Psycho-Political Muse, University of Chicago Press, Chapter 8, p. 179,
- Although Wright’s underwater man in Venice may remind us of the ghosts of the drowned in the Ohio River, this Italian fantasy is more benign; the canal is not like the Acherontic Ohio […]
- (figurative) Of or pertaining to hell.
- Synonyms: hellish, infernal, Plutonian, Tartarean
- 1623, George Langford, Search the Scriptures, London: John Clarke, Section 7, p. 43,
- How did those Aegyptians storme, when Moses and Aaron, Crumwell and Cranmer came, to deliuer Gods Israel, from that Acheronticall ignorance?
- 1638, Thomas Herbert, Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique, London: Jacob Blome and Richard Bishop, p. 17,
- Both sex, hideously cut, and gash, and pink in sundry works, their browes, nose, cheeks, armes, brest, back, belly, thighes and legges in Acherontick order: in a word, are so deformed, that if they had studied to become antick, they might be praised for invention.
- 1895, Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, New York: Harper, 1896, Part 6, Chapter 4, p. 428,
- […] they proceeded through the fog like Acherontic shades for a long while, without sound or gesture.
- (figurative) Lacking joy and comfort[1]; nearing death.
- Synonyms: bleak, cheerless, dismal, gloomy, lugubrious, moribund
- 1599, John Weever, Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut, and Newest Fashion, London: Thomas Bushell, The Thirde Weeke, Epig. 7,
- Depart to blacke nights Acheronticke Cell,
- 1621, Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Henry Cripps, Part 3, Section 3, Member 4, Subsection 2, p. 701,
- […] it is most odious, when an old Acheronticke dizard, that hath one foote in his graue, shall flicker after a young wench, what can be more detestable.
- 1860, Walter Thornbury, Turkish Life and Character, London: Smith, Elder, Volume 1, Chapter 9, p. 213,
- I see no owls, though I am told that at night they fill these Acherontic woods with demon hooting […]
- 1947, Frank Waters, The Yogi of Cockroach Court, Chicago: Sage Books, 1972, Chapter 10, p. 225,
- It was twilight in the streets. On every corner glowed lights from doors and dusty windows. Acherontic figures lounged by lazily or sat against the walls.
- 2001, Timothy West, A Moment Towards the End of the Play… London: Nick Hern Books, Chapter 22, p. 176,
- In Manchester, our designer Roy Stonehouse had built the dark lanes of his [Dickens’] Acherontic township on the low-lying land behind Water Street […]
Translations
pertaining to or resembling Acheron
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References
- Thomas Blount, Glossographia, London: George Sawbridge, 1661.
Anagrams
- anchoretic