paean

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“
It is a paean, an encomium to the color blue in its infinite shadings, spectral and moral, emollient and painful, serious and facetious.

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Definitions (5)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun A song of joyful praise or exultation.
  2. noun A fervent expression of joy or praise: "The art . . . was a paean to paganism” (Will Durant).
  3. noun An ancient Greek hymn of thanksgiving or invocation, especially to Apollo.

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Examples

  • Vergil's ninth Catalepton seems to have been written as a paean in honor of Messalla on receipt of the first incomplete report. —  Vergil
  • At the end of three weeks a coarse and discourteous paean was sung in the Woche. —  Georges Guynemer
  • It is a paean, an encomium to the color blue in its infinite shadings, spectral and moral, emollient and painful, serious and facetious. —  VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol III No 4
  • The sweep of the Aleuthra Ark with its massive backdrop of peaks and valleys stretched like a painting across the horizon, somehow not quite real. —  Morgawr
  • It closes — and the book closes — with a sort of sugarplum paean, the sweets and spices being in the end gracefully spiritualised. —  George Washington's Rules of Civility
 

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Paean has been looked up 408 times, favorited once, listed 66 times, and commented on 0 times.

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Etymologies (1)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Latin paeān, hymn of thanksgiving, often addressed to Apollo, from Greek paiān, from Paiā, a title of Apollo.
 

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