Word.ws English Dictionary

cothurnus

cothurnus noun: a buskin used in ancient tragedy.

Noun

cothurnus (plural cothurni)

  1. A buskin used in ancient tragedy.
  2. (figuratively) The stilted style denoting ancient tragedy.
    • Madame Grandoni had insisted on the fact that she was an actress, and this little speech seemed a glimpse of the cothurnus.1875, Henry James, Roderick Hudson, New York Edition 1909, hardcover, page 410

Forms of cothurnus

pluralcothurni
alternative formcothurn
alternative formkothornos

Origin of cothurnus

Learned borrowing from Latin cothurnus, itself borrowed from Ancient Greek κόθορνος (kóthornos).

Words formed from cothurnus

Questions about cothurnus

What does cothurnus mean?
Cothurnus means a buskin used in ancient tragedy.
What part of speech is cothurnus?
Cothurnus is a noun.
What is the plural of cothurnus?
The plural of cothurnus is cothurni.

Words near cothurnus in the dictionary

  1. cothurni
  2. cothurnian
  3. cothurnopore
  4. cothurnopores
  5. cothurns
  6. cothurnus
  7. cothymia
  8. cotia
  9. cotias
  10. coticular
  11. coticule

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cothurnus (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: “cothurnus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cothurnus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.