Word.ws English Dictionary

sop to Cerberus

sop to Cerberus noun: something given or done to pacify or bribe.

Noun

sop to Cerberus

  1. Something given or done to pacify or bribe.
    • to give/throw a sop to Cerberus
    • He has thrown a sop to Cerberus, and is consequently now acclaimed in sacred circles to which entrance had long been denied him.1914 January, Alfred Hayes, “The Relation of Music to Poetry”, in The Atlantic

Origin of sop to Cerberus

From Virgil's Aeneid, where the Sibyl throws Cerberus a loaf laced with honey and herbs to induce sleep.

Questions about sop to Cerberus

What does sop to Cerberus mean?
Sop to Cerberus means something given or done to pacify or bribe.
What part of speech is sop to Cerberus?
Sop to Cerberus is a noun.

Words near sop to Cerberus in the dictionary

  1. soowee
  2. Sooy
  3. Sooys
  4. sop
  5. sop kambing
  6. sop to Cerberus
  7. sop up
  8. sop-in-wine
  9. SOPA
  10. sopaipa
  11. sopaipas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sop to Cerberus (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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