centauresque

centauresque

English

Etymology

centaur +‎ -esque

Adjective

centauresque (comparative more centauresque, superlative most centauresque)

1. Having attributes like those of the mythical centaur.
   • 2011, Gérard Gavarry, Jane Kuntz, Making a Novel, p. 60:

     More distrustful and irritable than ever, in this section, this watchdog character was to be obsessed with the centauresque likeness of my four boys.

   • 1911, "The Centaurs", The Nation: Volume 92, page 212:

     Here they take on their true centauresque form, each one mounting a hired courser and clattering through the town in the direction of the Wood of Verrières.

2. By extension, having the characteristics of two things combined together; hybridized; chimeric.
   • 2007, Patricia Kathleen Page, Zailig Pollock, The Filled Pen: Selected Non-fiction, p. 68:

     Message and method merge, centauresque, to assist him.

   • 1993, Albert Russell Ascoli, Victoria Ann Kahn, Machiavelli and the Discourse of Literature, p. 252:

     Machiavelli begins chapter 26 by asking if the times are right for a "new prince" in Italy, one "prudente e virtuoso," like Borgia, like the profeta armato, like the hybrid centauresque monster to be composed of Machiavelli's counsel and Medicean power.

   • 1863, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Greek Christian poets and the English poets, page 160:

     We are of opinion in any way, that the grace is more obvious than the strength ; and there may be something centauresque and of twofold nature in their rushing mutabilities, and changes on passion and weakness.

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French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sɑ̃.tɔ.ʁɛsk/

Adjective

centauresque (plural centauresques)

1. centauresque
   • 1998, Mētis, Vol. 13, p. 365:

     Par l'ouverture de la jarre, Héraclès bouleverse l'espace centauresque.

   • 2015, Martine Hermant, Les Contes de la Licorne, p. 77:

     L'enchanteresse les suit et tous les centauresques derrière eux.