Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of, relating to, or characteristic of George Bernard Shaw or his works: Shavian wit.
- n. An admirer or disciple of George Bernard Shaw.
Wiktionary
- adj. Of, or relating to George Bernard Shaw or his works.
- n. An admirer of Shaw, or an advocate of his ideas.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of or relating to George Bernard Shaw or his works
- n. an admirer of G. B. Shaw or his works
Etymologies
- From Shavius, Latinization of the name Shaw. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Chesterton suggests them by queer novels and paradoxical essays; Shaw puts his ideas into the mouthpieces of those who are known as Shavian characters; he interprets his theories by the Stage, therefore his sermons reach tens of thousands who would not read him if he preached from a pulpit.”
“That kind of Shavian subversion -- denying obvious narrative pleasures, whacking attitudes around, demanding that audiences keep up with the sly to-and-fro -- can be delightful.”
The Washington Post: George Bernard Shaw's 'Misalliance' misses the mark at Olney Theatre Center
“Light Up the Sky (1948), a rackety farce that Hart pretentiously described as "Shavian," is occasionally revived, but chiefly before the undemanding audiences for dinner theater and summer stock.”
“Their names become adjectives: Dickensian, Shavian, Kafkaesque.”
“Opening with a full bosomed woman, Grace Tranfield (Rachel Botchan) in a compromising position with a known philanderer Leonard Charteris (Bradford Cover) on a divan, this comedy replete with Shavian tropes on such forward thinking subjects as the sexes, the coy pleasures of friendship vs. marriage, the virtues and joylessness of vegetarianism, the dialogue could have been lifted from the pages of a lifestyle magazine.”
“But the complexity of his own world view he opposed British involvement in the war but was himself a power-worshiper with a totalitarian itch who believed passionately in human perfectibility charges what might have been a standard-issue Shavian sermon with the multilayered ambiguity of high art.”
“Her plays contained Chekhovian echoes, as her friends and colleagues have noted; at least for me, they also evoked a Shavian kind of moral imagination and challenge, but with too much humor, warmth, and regret — too much life — ever to seem formulaic or austere.”
“After all, conservatives have been on a bender of Shavian wit lately: “You lie!””
“For Shavian shingled houses, as divined by Stanford White”
“For Shavian-shingled houses, as divined by Stanford White”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘Shavian’.
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Artfully Eponymous Adjectives
Adjectives, such as quixotic, whose root is the name of an artist, poet, writer, or literary character.
For additional eponyms see the lists Namesakes and Lend Me Your Name. I've liste...Thoreauvian, Gradgrindian, Blytonesque, Rabelaisian, Emersonian, Byronic, Dickensian, Lovecraftian, Miltonian, Byronian, Byronesque, Flaubertian and 228 more...
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You know like ____'s work.
Felliniesque, Kafkaesque, Nietzschean, Pynchonesque, Pynchonian, Wellesian, Spoonerism, Thatcherite, Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, Wilsonian, Praxitelean and 15 more...
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