Word of the Day:
coryphaeus
What It Means
The conductor or leader of the chorus of a drama.
The chief or leader of an interest or party.
The leader of an opera chorus or another ensemble of singers.
Coryphaeus in Context
“Among those rare exceptions, fortunately, was that coryphaeus of modern thought in the humanities, Professor Roman Jakobson.”
Did You Know?
Borrowed from Latin coryphaeus, from Ancient Greek κορυφαῖος (koruphaîos, “leader of the chorus in an Ancient Greek drama”), from κορυφή (koruphḗ, “top of the head, crown”) (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₂- (“head, top; horn”)) + -ῐος (-ĭos, suffix forming adjectives meaning ‘belonging to, pertaining to’).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: coryphaeus (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “coryphaeus.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/coryphaeus. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
