Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Greek Mythology The daughter of Tantalus who, after boasting that she had more children than Leto, suffered the killing of her own children by Artemis and Apollo, and turned to stone while bewailing their loss.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In Gr. mythology, the daughter of Tantalus, married to Amphion, king of Thebes. Proud of her numerous progeny, she provoked the anger of Apollo and Artemis (Diana), by boasting over their mother Leto (Latona), who had but those two children. She was punished by seeing all her children die by the arrows of the two light-deities. She herself was metamorphosed by Zeus (Jupiter) into a stone which it is still sought to identify on the slope of Mount Sipylus, near Smyrna. This legend has afforded a fruitful subject for art, and was notably represented in a group attributed to Scopas, now best known from copies in the Uffizi at Florence.
- n. In zoology:
- n. A genus of trilobites.
- n. A genus of mollusks.
- n. A genus of African weaver-birds of the subfamily Viduinæ. N. ardens and N. concolor are examples.
- n. In botany, a genus of monocotyledonous plants belonging to the family Liliaceæ. See Funkia.
Wiktionary
- n. A daughter of Tantalus
- n. A female given name
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Class. Myth.) The daughter of Tantalus, and wife of Amphion, king of Thebes. Her pride in her children provoked Apollo and Diana, who slew them all. Niobe herself was changed by the gods into stone.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (Greek mythology) the daughter of Tantalus whose boasting about her children provoked Apollo and Artemis to slay them all; Niobe was turned to stone while bewailing her loss
Examples
“a mutilated statue they call a Niobe (God knows why), with drapery blown back by the wind and appearing quite transparent.”
The Greville Memoirs A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Volume 1 (of 3)
“Phil called her Niobe, and declared that if she didn't look out, she'd float away on her tears; Fee threatened to put her in a picture, just as she looked; I coaxed and promised her one or two of my things, and Nora scolded: nothing had any effect, Kathie just wept straight on.”
“Scopas was his contemporary, and was the author of the celebrated group of Niobe, which is one of the chief ornaments of the gallery of sculpture at Florence.”
The Old Roman World, : the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization.
“In the same room with the Niobe is a head which struck me more -- the”
“[323] A parody of a passage in the lost tragedy of 'Niobe' of Aeschylus.”
“Is Aeagrus [67] accused, he is not acquitted before he has recited a passage from 'Niobe' [68] and he chooses the finest.”
“He could not wield the painter's brush, but the great sculptor had yet power to depict the grief of a "Niobe," the agony of the "Laocoön," or the majesty of a "Moses.”
“[110] The "Niobe," which exists only in a few fragments.”
“Shall we have the "Niobe" on the Atlantic and the "Rainbow" on the Pacific, and then, if war breaks out, ask New Zealand to take care of our fleet.”
“Maugham could hardly have bettered his study of an impulsive and exigent woman, rising at the outset to the height of a bold and womanly choice in defiance of social prejudice and family tradition, and then relapsing under the disillusions of marriage into the weakest failings of her class, rising again, from a self-torturing neurotic into a kind of Niobe at the death of her baby.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘Niobe’.
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Not in the Periodic Table
Words that sound like they might be the names of elements of the periodic table, but that aren't. Many of the words listed here were actually proposed as names for substances their creators thought...
tentorium, columbarium, nasturtium, deuterium, caladium, valerian, concordium, synangium, chorium, geranium, hymenium, pyrenium and 310 more...
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LIT - Greco-Latin gods and heroes
Ganymede, Io, Olympia, Callisto, Hera, Kronos, Despoina, Hyades, Dyaus, Rhadamanthus, Semele, Leto and 198 more...
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LIT - Iliad - key words and protagonists
abduct, abducting, abductor, Achaea, Achaean, Achilles, advise, Aegean, Aegean Sea, Aegina, aegis, Aeneas and 713 more...
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Master and Commander
An Aubrey/Maturin list.
God help me.
I blame chained_bear.prize-agent, master and commander, trabacaloes, xebecs, hipped, truckling, Bakewell tart, Eccles cake, suet pudding, slop-ship, copperplate, tramontana and 57 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for Niobe.
ruzuzu HAMLET:
O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead!—nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,—
Let me not think on't,—Frailty, thy name is woman!—
A little month; or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body
Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,—
O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer,—married with mine uncle,
My father's brother; but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month;
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married:— O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good;
But break my heart,—for I must hold my tongue.
- Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2 Aug 5, 2010