Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The Muse of lyric poetry and music.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In classic myth., one of the Muses, a divinity of joy and pleasure, inventress of the double flute, favoring rather the wild and simple melodies of primitive peoples than the move finished art of music, and associated more with Bacchus than with Apollo; the patroness of flute-players.
  • noun [NL.] A genus of palms, having slender cylindrical stems, sometimes nearly 100 feet in height, crowned by a tuft of pinnate leaves, with the leaflets narrow, regular, and close together.
  • noun [NL.] In zoology: A genus of butterflies. Also called Archonias.
  • noun A genus of crustaceans.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • (Class. Myth.) The Muse who presided over music.
  • (Bot.) A genus of palms, some species of which are elegant trees.

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

  • proper noun A taxonomic genus within the subtribe Euterpeinae — the açai palms.
  • proper noun Greek mythology The Muse of music and lyric poetry, specifically of flute playing, joy and pleasure.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (Greek mythology) the Muse of music (or the flute)
  • noun a monocotyledonous genus of graceful palm trees in tropical America

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek ευτέρπη ("pleasing"), from εὖ ("well") + τέρπειν (terpein, "to delight, to please").

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