Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An inhabitant or native of Abdera, in Thrace.
  • noun Democritus, the Laughing Philosopher.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin Abderita, Abderites, from Ancient Greek Ἀβδηρίτης (Abdēritēs).

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Examples

  • An Abderite, a Kymen and Sidonese walk into a bar. . .

    "We, in former times, constantly made jokes about different races." Ann Althouse 2009

  • "The most haunting joke in the Philogelos, however, is no. 114, about a resident of Abdera, a Greek town whose citizens were renowned for their foolishness:" Seeing a eunuch, an Abderite asked him how many children he had.

    'Stop Me if You've Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes' 2008

  • But the fact that the one he likes best has lost its punch line (it starts with an Abderite asking a eunuch how many children he has) probably indicates where Holt's sympathies lie.

    Isn't It Funny? Beard, Mary 2008

  • During the same summer Nymphodorus, son of Pythes, an Abderite, whose sister Sitalces had married, was made their proxenus by the

    The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides 2005

  • Abderite, one of the old philosophers, hath said nothing to the purpose in this matter, when he tells us that those that marry wives invite a great many to the entertainment, that many may see and be witnesses that they being born free take to themselves wives of the same condition.

    Essays and Miscellanies 2004

  • Abderite, one of the old philosophers, hath said nothing to the purpose in this matter, when he tells us that those that marry wives invite a great many to the entertainment, that many may see and be witnesses that they being born free take to themselves wives of the same condition.

    Symposiacs 2004

  • During the same summer Nymphodorus son of Pythes, an Abderite whose sister Sitalces had married, was made their proxenus by the Athenians and sent for to Athens.

    THE LANDMARK THUCYDIDES Robert B. Strassler 2003

  • During the same summer Nymphodorus son of Pythes, an Abderite whose sister Sitalces had married, was made their proxenus by the Athenians and sent for to Athens.

    THE LANDMARK THUCYDIDES Robert B. Strassler 2003

  • —Friendship and Virtue met together, and kiss’d each other in the street—the golden age return’d, and hung over the town of Abdera—every Abderite took his oaten pipe, and every Abderitish woman left her purple web, and chastely sat her down and listen’d to the song—3

    23. A Fragment 1917

  • Well, to compare like with like, the majority of our educated class is now suffering from an Abderite epidemic.

    Works of Lucian of Samosata — Volume 02 of Samosata Lucian 1894

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