Word.ws English Dictionary

Circean poison

Circean poison noun: a poison or potion that changes the body but not the mind.

Noun

Circean poison (uncountable)

  1. A poison or potion that changes the body but not the mind.
    • And the riven Tree in the West withered; and the broken Car was changed by the Circean poison of the golden plumes into a two-natured monster, half-bird, half-beast — a mockery of the holy Griffin.1926, Essays in memory of Barrett Wendell, page 77
  2. Anything magically (and fatally) captivating, such as a potion or applause.
    • O foulest Circean draught, thou poison of Popular Applause! madness is in thee, and death; thy end is Bedlam and the Grave.1834, Thomas Carlyle, "The Death of Edward Irving," essay from Fraser's Magazine 61 (1834)http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/carlyle/irving.html
    • "Is not this herd," he continues, "worse than Circean poison?"1878, John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, page 242

Origin of Circean poison

After the Greek mythological figure of Circe, who (in the Odyssey) tempted men to excess before turning them into pigs.

Questions about Circean poison

What does Circean poison mean?
Circean poison means a poison or potion that changes the body but not the mind.
What part of speech is Circean poison?
Circean poison is a noun.

Words near Circean poison in the dictionary

  1. Circassic
  2. Circassienne
  3. circatidal
  4. Circe
  5. Circean
  6. Circean poison
  7. circed
  8. Circensial
  9. circensian
  10. Circeo
  11. Circesium

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Circean poison (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:

Cite this entry: “Circean poison.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/circean_poison. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.