Ozymandias
/ˌɒziˈmændiəs/
Ozymandias noun: a person once famous and respected who has since been utterly forgotten.
Noun
Ozymandias (plural Ozymandiases)
- A person once famous and respected who has since been utterly forgotten.
- An unavoidable sequel of the posterity delusion is the death of the writerly self, which depends too much on incoherence and inconsistency to remain pompous for long. And of course, the vast majority of today's mummified immortals are tomorrow's Ozymandiases.2013, Will Self, quoted in The Guardian: "Falling short: seven writers reflect on failure" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/22/falling-short-writers-reflect-failure
Forms of Ozymandias
| plural | Ozymandiases |
|---|
Origin of Ozymandias
From Ancient Greek Ὀσυμανδύας (Osumandúas), from Demotic Egyptian wsr-mꜣꜥ.t-rꜥ, smn-rꜥ, ns-mn-rꜥ, from Egyptian wsr-mꜣꜥt-rꜥ, the first part of the throne name of pharaoh Ramesses II. Modern usage derives from the poem Ozymandias, about a proud king whose empire and memory have long since crumbled into obscurity, written by Percy Bysshe Shelley and inspired by Diodorus Siculus's description of a colossal statue in the Ramesseum.
Words formed from Ozymandias
Questions about Ozymandias
- What does Ozymandias mean?
- Ozymandias means a person once famous and respected who has since been utterly forgotten.
- What part of speech is Ozymandias?
- Ozymandias is a noun.
- How do you pronounce Ozymandias?
- Ozymandias is pronounced /ˌɒziˈmændiəs/.
- What is the plural of Ozymandias?
- The plural of Ozymandias is Ozymandiases.
Words near Ozymandias in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: Ozymandias (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: “Ozymandias.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ozymandias. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.