ephebe
/ɛˈfiːb/
ephebe noun: an 18- to 20-year-old man in ancient Greece undergoing military training.
Noun
ephebe (plural ephebes)
- An 18- to 20-year-old man in ancient Greece undergoing military training.
- A young man; a youth.
- His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe. Tame essence of [Oscar] Wilde.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 9: Scylla and Charybdis]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey], page 190
- Indeed Tom was much still the ephebe, sharing boys with his friend though talking of the gravity of marriage.1993, Anthony Burgess, A Dead Man in Deptford
Forms of ephebe
| plural | ephebes |
|---|
Origin of ephebe
Via Latin ephēbus, from Ancient Greek ἔφηβος (éphēbos, “adolescent”), from ἐπί (epí, “early”) + ἥβη (hḗbē, “manhood”), late 19th c.
Words formed from ephebe
Words that rhyme with ephebe
Questions about ephebe
- What does ephebe mean?
- Ephebe means an 18- to 20-year-old man in ancient Greece undergoing military training.
- What part of speech is ephebe?
- Ephebe is a noun.
- How do you pronounce ephebe?
- Ephebe is pronounced /ɛˈfiːb/.
- What is the plural of ephebe?
- The plural of ephebe is ephebes.
Words near ephebe in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ephebe (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: “ephebe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ephebe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.