Word.ws English Dictionary

kouros

/ˈkuːɹɒs/

kouros noun: a sculpture of a naked youth in Ancient Greece, the male equivalent of a kore.

kouros: a sculpture of a naked youth in Ancient Greece, the male equivalent of a kore
Image: CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

kouros (plural kouroi)

  1. A sculpture of a naked youth in Ancient Greece, the male equivalent of a kore.
    • A redstone kouros from Sounion, this strapping young Amsterdammer, translated into the slenderer grace of the modern graminivore.1974, Guy Davenport, Tatlin!
    • The smiling kouros is the first fully free-standing sculpture in art.1990, Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae

Forms of kouros

pluralkouroi

Origin of kouros

From Ionic Ancient Greek κοῦρος (koûros), variant of Attic κόρος (kóros, “boy”).

Questions about kouros

What does kouros mean?
Kouros means a sculpture of a naked youth in Ancient Greece, the male equivalent of a kore.
What part of speech is kouros?
Kouros is a noun.
How do you pronounce kouros?
Kouros is pronounced /ˈkuːɹɒs/.
What is the plural of kouros?
The plural of kouros is kouroi.

Words near kouros in the dictionary

  1. kourbashes
  2. kourbashing
  3. Kouri
  4. Kouris
  5. kouroi
  6. kouros
  7. kourotrophic
  8. kourotrophoi
  9. kourotrophos
  10. Kourou
  11. Kourtney

Source and license

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