Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One who is in a state of nympholepsy.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. One seized with ecstasy or frenzy; a person rapt or inspired. The explanation ‘a person seized with madness on having seen a nymph’ (see the quotations) is inaccurate.
Wiktionary
- n. A person in a state of nympholepsy.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a person seized by nympholepsy
Etymologies
- From Ancient Greek νυμφόληπτος (numpholēptos, "caught by nymphs, frenzied"), from νύμφη (numphē) + λαμβάνω (lambanō, "I take"). (Wiktionary)
- Greek numpholēptos, caught by nymph, frenzied : numphē, nymph + lēptos, seized (from lambanein, lēp-, to seize). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Wouldn't "nympholept" be a good word to see more of around the place, by the way?”
“It has no aim of imitating springtime noises, but seeks to stimulate by suggestion the hearer's creative imagination, and provoke by a musical telepathy the emotions that swayed the nympholept composer.”
“I said that any remark of yours was to be received by me in all reverence; and truth is a part of reverence, so I shall end by telling you the truth, that I think you quite wrong in your objection to 'nympholept.”
“Thanks to it -- all thanks to it -- I did not become a nympholept.”
“It is enough to say that Hamilton represents himself as by no means an ardent nympholept, or even as flattered by demi-goddess-like advances, which are of the most obliging description; and that the lady has not only to make fuller and fuller revelations of her beauty, but at last to exert her supernatural power to some extent in order to carry the recreant into her "cool grot," not, indeed, under water, but invisibly situated on land.”
A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 From the Beginning to 1800
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