dithyrambic
dithyrambic adjective: of, pertaining to, or resembling a dithyramb; especially, passionate, intoxicated with enthusiasm.
Adjective
dithyrambic (comparative more dithyrambic, superlative most dithyrambic)
- Of, pertaining to, or resembling a dithyramb; especially, passionate, intoxicated with enthusiasm.
- Signor Papini, the leader of italian pragmatism, grows fairly dithyrambic over the view that it opens, of man's divinely-creative functions.1907, William James, Pragmatism
- Nevertheless, if one has time and, still more, the patience to search whole acres of dithyrambic prose, he shall have his reward.1915, William Forbes Gray, Some Old Scots Judges: Anecdotes and Impressions, →ISBN, page 25
Noun
dithyrambic (plural dithyrambics)
- A dithyramb.
- As we have no remains of the dithyrambics of the ancients, we cannot exactly ascertain the measure.1775, Anonymous, review of the West translation of Pindar's Olympic Odes, in The Critical Review, volume 40, page 451
Examples of dithyrambic in a sentence
- Confounded by a dithyrambic conflict of fear and exultation, Bradly could only snatch at one coherent thought, "Damme, after the old bitch accusin' me..."1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 236:
- ... thighs appear to be continuously alighting and pausing in mid-air, detached from their dithyrambic owners, like luminous birds on the wing.1985, Paul Binding, Harmonica's Bridegroom, →ISBN, page 131:
- The dithyrambic chorus is a chorus of transformed people, for whom their social past, their civic position, is entirely forgotten.2000, Ian C. Johnston, The Birth of Tragedy http://books.google.com/books?id=ufCCJUFo-LMC by Friedrich Nietzsche, page 104
Forms of dithyrambic
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more dithyrambic |
| superlative | most dithyrambic |
| Noun | |
| plural | dithyrambics |
Origin of dithyrambic
From dithyramb + -ic.
Words formed from dithyrambic
Questions about dithyrambic
- What does dithyrambic mean?
- Dithyrambic means of, pertaining to, or resembling a dithyramb; especially, passionate, intoxicated with enthusiasm.
- How do you use dithyrambic in a sentence?
- Confounded by a dithyrambic conflict of fear and exultation, Bradly could only snatch at one coherent thought, "Damme, after the old bitch accusin' me..."
- What part of speech is dithyrambic?
- Dithyrambic can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near dithyrambic in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dithyrambic (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: “dithyrambic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dithyrambic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.