Word.ws English Dictionary

Hydaspes

/haɪˈdæspiːz/

Hydaspes proper noun: the river Jhelum, on the Indian subcontinent, especially as the location of a battle fought by Alexander the Great against King Porus in 326 BCE.

Proper noun

Hydaspes

  1. (historical) The river Jhelum, on the Indian subcontinent, especially as the location of a battle fought by Alexander the Great against King Porus in 326 BCE.
    • When Alexander marched along the banks of the Hydaspes and Ancesine, two of the rivers which fall into the Indus, he observed that there were many crocodiles in those rivers, and that the country produced beans of the same species with those which were common in Egypt. From these circumstances, he...1796, William Robertson, The History of America, 1812, 1st American Edition, Volume 1, page 454
    • Alexander having now made ready a fleet on the banks of the river Hydaspes, manned it with all the Phœnicians Cyprians, and Egyptians which he found in his camp, choosing the sailors and rowers out of such as he knew to be expert in sea affairs.1813, John Rooke (translator), Arrian of Nicomedia, Arrian's History of the expedition of Alexander the Great, J. Davis, 2nd Edition, page 221
  2. (Greek) A god associated with the river.

Origin of Hydaspes

Borrowed from Latin Hydaspēs, from Ancient Greek Ὑδάσπης (Hudáspēs), itself from Sanskrit वितस्ता (vitastā), also proposed to have been borrowed from Old Persian *Vidāspaʰ (literally “caring for horses”), from *vīd- (“to take care of”) + 𐎠𐎿𐎱 (a-s-p, “horse”) to explain the development -sp- instead of -st-, but this has no basis in any attested names for the river.

Words formed from Hydaspes

  • Battle of the Hydaspes

Questions about Hydaspes

What does Hydaspes mean?
Hydaspes means the river Jhelum, on the Indian subcontinent, especially as the location of a battle fought by Alexander the Great against King Porus in 326 BCE.
What part of speech is Hydaspes?
Hydaspes is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Hydaspes?
Hydaspes is pronounced /haɪˈdæspiːz/.

Words near Hydaspes in the dictionary

  1. hydantoic acid
  2. hydantoin
  3. hydantoinase
  4. hydantoinases
  5. hydantoins
  6. Hydaspes
  7. hydathode
  8. hydathodes
  9. hydatic
  10. hydatid
  11. hydatid of Morgagni

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Hydaspes (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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