bacchantic

bacchantic adjective: bacchanalian; drunken or frenzied and unrestrained; orgiastic.

Adjective (1)

bacchantic (not comparable)

Bacchanalian; drunken or frenzied and unrestrained; orgiastic.
- The orchestra played bacchantic music, and in bacchantic madness the dancers rushed by each other.1878, Friedrich Spielhagen, Through Night to Light, page 70
- There is a passage from chaos to cosmos marked by the "bacchantic" riots of Nature and even ourselves.1916, Edward Douglas Fawcett, The World as Imagination, page 469
Pertaining to the clergy or worship of Bacchus.
- His friend Ted dancing the can-can trouserless with his shirt-tails flying, is an absurd equivalent to the bacchantic worshippers, who were supposed to don female dress during the rite.1996, Contemporary Drama in English - Volumes 4-6, page 61
- In this way the spectators were contextualized as participants in a rite (the chorus of bacchantic dancers and those assisting were originally not separated, either spatially or in their pragmatic roles), who had to perform rite (rightly) that which lay beyond them all.2011, Johannes Ehrat, Power of Scandal: Semiotic and Pragmatic in Mass Media, page 93

Bacchantic (comparative more Bacchantic, superlative most Bacchantic)

(alternative) Alternative form of bacchantic.
- The Perchta legends are of a somewhat wild— occasionally Bacchantic and Korybantic — character, in which the gloomy element is, however, not wanting.1872 May, Karl Blind, “Freia-Holda, The Teutonic Goddess of Love”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume 25, number 149, page 612
- Another beautiful fragment—noticed also by Mr. Koyl, who is making a releve/ of the villa—was part of a face, having the character of the Bacchantic masks of the Warwick vase.1913 November, W. C. Francis, “Rome Letter”, in Journal of the American Institute of Architects, volume 1, number 10, page 507

Yet nature is Spirit only in its otherness— self-alienated Spriit: "A bacchantic god innocent of restraint and reflection has merely been let loose into it " ( E §247z ) .1992, David Kolb, New Perspectives on Hegel's Philosophy of Religion, page 87:
It is even possible that this bacchantic motif entered Ovid's tale via Sophocles' lost Tereus, though this is only conjecture.2018, J.P. Sullivan, Irene J.F. de Jong, Modern Critical Theory and Classical Literature, page 274:

What does bacchantic mean?: Bacchantic means bacchanalian; drunken or frenzied and unrestrained; orgiastic.
How do you use bacchantic in a sentence?: Yet nature is Spirit only in its otherness— self-alienated Spriit: "A bacchantic god innocent of restraint and reflection has merely been let loose into it " ( E §247z ) .
What part of speech is bacchantic?: Bacchantic is an adjective.

Adapted from Wiktionary: bacchantic (page history and authors); Bacchantic (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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