chelidonius
chelidonius noun: a stone supposed to be taken from the stomach of a swallow, with purported magical or medicinal properties.
Noun
chelidonius
- A stone supposed to be taken from the stomach of a swallow, with purported magical or medicinal properties.
- In the belly of a swallow, there is a stone found, called chelidonius, “which, if it be lapped in a fair cloth, and tied to the right arm, will cure lunaticks, mad men, make them amiable and merry.”1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II...
- According to Thomas de Cantimpré the swallow-stone is a talisman for merchants and tradesmen. The merits of the chelidonius, as this stone was called, were fully recognized in Saxon England and are given due prominence in an Anglo-Saxon medical treatise, dating form the first half of the tenth...1915, George Frederick Kunz, The Magic of Jewels and Charms, page 172
Origin of chelidonius
Ultimately from Ancient Greek χελῑδών (khelīdṓn, “swallow”).
Questions about chelidonius
- What does chelidonius mean?
- Chelidonius means a stone supposed to be taken from the stomach of a swallow, with purported magical or medicinal properties.
- What part of speech is chelidonius?
- Chelidonius is a noun.
Words near chelidonius in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: chelidonius (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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Cite this entry: “chelidonius.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chelidonius. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.