Word.ws English Dictionary

Atreid

Atreid noun: any of the family and descendants of the mythical Mycenaean king Atreus, including either of his sons Menelaus and Agamemnon, who both feature in the Iliad.

Noun

Atreid (plural Atreids)

  1. (Greek) Any of the family and descendants of the mythical Mycenaean king Atreus, including either of his sons Menelaus and Agamemnon, who both feature in the Iliad.
    • Ancient tradition said that Mycenae was founded by the Perseid dynasty and that the Atreids (Pelops, Atreus, Agamemnon) were outsiders.1998, Michael Wood, In Search of the Trojan War, page 157
    • While in the Oresteia sacrifice operated as a metaphor for the intrafamilial murders of the Atreids, among the Taurians the metaphor takes on materiality.1999, Barbara Goff, “The Violence of Community: Ritual in the Iphigenia in Tauris”, in Mark William Padilla, editor, Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece: Literature, Religion, Society, page 112

Forms of Atreid

pluralAtreids

Origin of Atreid

Borrowed from Ancient Greek Ἀτρείδης (Atreídēs). By surface analysis, Atreus + -id.

Questions about Atreid

What does Atreid mean?
Atreid means any of the family and descendants of the mythical Mycenaean king Atreus, including either of his sons Menelaus and Agamemnon, who both feature in the Iliad.
What part of speech is Atreid?
Atreid is a noun.
What is the plural of Atreid?
The plural of Atreid is Atreids.

Words near Atreid in the dictionary

  1. Atrebatians
  2. atrede
  3. atredes
  4. atreding
  5. ATREE
  6. Atreid
  7. Atreidae
  8. Atreids
  9. Atrek
  10. atremble
  11. atreme

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Atreid (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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