Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun plural The spirits of the dead considered in ancient Rome as frightening specters and often exorcised from homes in religious rituals.
from The Century Dictionary.
- Among the ancient Romans, the spirits of the departed considered as evil-disposed specters or ghosts, who were supposed to do mischief at night to the living, and were exorcised annually with a ceremonial ritual by the head of each household, at midnight on May 9th, 11th, and 13th, on which days was celebrated the festival called lemuralia or lemuria.
- In zoology:
- Lemurs: equivalent to Lemuroidea.
- A group of noctuid moths.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun plural Spirits or ghosts of the departed; specters.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The
spirits orghosts of thedead .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Coals glowed red in several braziers to take the chill out of the room, and the servants moved like lemures in and out of the shadows.
Antony and Cleopatra Colleen McCullough 2007
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“No farmer will fell the forest around it for fear of angering the lemures.”
Antony and Cleopatra Colleen McCullough 2007
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“No farmer will fell the forest around it for fear of angering the lemures.”
Antony and Cleopatra Colleen McCullough 2007
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For if no one has seen farfadets, or lemures, or dives, or peris, or demons, or cacodemons, the predictions of astrologers have often been found true.
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That way, they belong to old Egypt and will not become lemures to haunt Rome.
Antony and Cleopatra Colleen McCullough 2007
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That way, they belong to old Egypt and will not become lemures to haunt Rome.
Antony and Cleopatra Colleen McCullough 2007
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Coals glowed red in several braziers to take the chill out of the room, and the servants moved like lemures in and out of the shadows.
Antony and Cleopatra Colleen McCullough 2007
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Not being given to the fear of larvae and lemures, and also knowing that a mistake is easily committed in a great house like that, and that my visitor might have made one, I grew drowsy in a little while, and soon fell asleep again.
Wylder's Hand 2003
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Lemures or larvae, and Ursula, she said to me that she had been young, young as me; they were all human and now they are lemures/'
Vittorio, The Vampire Rice, Anne, 1941- 1999
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On leaving human bodies they become lares if they have shown themselves good, if evil, lemures or larvae.
Vittorio, The Vampire Rice, Anne, 1941- 1999
knitandpurl commented on the word lemures
" fermented lemures, fiery spectres,
embottled spirit vapors swirling in the crude"
"The Sink" by Catherine Bowman in The New Yorker, June 28, 2010, p 36
July 14, 2010