phenix

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Variant of phoenix.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In anc. Oriental myth., a wonderful bird of great beauty, which, after living 500 or 600 years in the Arabian wilderness, the only one of its kind, built for itself a funeral pile of spices and aromatic gums, lighted the pile with the fanning of its wings, and was burned upon it, but from its ashes revived in the freshness of youth. Hence the phenix often serves as an emblem of immortality. Allusions to this myth are found in the hieroglyphic writings, and the fable survives in popular forms in Arabia, Persia, and India. By heralds the phenix is always represented in the midst of flames.
2. n. A person of unique excellence; one of singular distinction or peerless beauty; a paragon.
3. n. In entomology, the geometrid moth Cidaria ribesiaria, whose larva feeds on the currant and gooseberry: a collectors' name in England. The small phenix is
4. n. See phenix.
5. n. A genus of palms, constituting the tribe Phœniceæ, characterized by the three distinct carpels (only one of which matures), containing a single erect cylindrical seed with a deep longitudinal groove, and having the embryo near the base or on the back. The 12 species are the cultivated and the wild date-palms, all natives of the Old World, within or near the tropics of Asia and Africa. The habit of different species varies greatly, the trunks being either short or tall, robust or slender, erect or declined. The trunk is destitute of spines, but is commonly covered with the persistent leaf-bases. The palms grow in close clusters, forming groves. The pinnate leaves are large and terminal, forming a spreading canopy, each consisting of very numerous narrow, rigid, and compressed leaflets, the lower ones shorter and transformed into spines. The abundant yellow and rather small flowers have three sepals and three petals. The staminate trees bear oblong or ovoid flowers on numerous erect and much-branched spadices between the upper leaves. The pistillate trees bear spherical flowers on similar but often nodding spadices, followed by numerous cylindrical orange, brown, or black berries, those of P. dactylifera being the dates of commerce. (For this fruit, see date-palm and date; and for the sugar made from it, see jaggery and goor.) This species is the chief palm of history and of ceremony, having been used as the emblem of triumph from the Egyptian worship of Isis onward. It is the palm of ancient Palestine, and has been for centuries cultivated for miles along the Italian and French Riviera, to supply palm-branches for festivals. White palm-branches are procured by binding the top of the unfolding leaf-bud, thereby blanching the inner leaves. It does not fruit in Italy nor under glass, and requires for successful growth an average annual temperature of 80° F. In Africa native huts are made from its leaves, its wood is used for building, its fiber for cloth and ropes, its leafstalks for brooms, crates, etc., its young leaves are eaten, and an intoxicating drink is made from its sap. It reaches a height, of 80 and rarely 120 feet, and bears fruit, though in diminishing abundance, for as long as 200 years. The necessity of artificially fertilizing it first drew attention to the existence of sex in plants. P. sylvestris, the wild date-palm of India and Africa, is smaller, reaches a height of 40 feet, bears yellow or reddish berries, and is an important source of sugar and toddy, both prepared from its sap, which it is said can be made to flow from the upper part of its trunk for twenty years. P. pusilla, a dwarf from southern China, and P. reclinata, a decumbent palm from the Cape of Good Hope, also bear sweet edible berries, and are valued, as is P. paludosa, a stout Indian tree, for decorative uses.
6. n. A silver coin of modern Greece, struck in 1828 by President Capo d' Istria. Its value is rather less than that of a lira.
7. n. A southern constellation formed by Theo-dori below Cetus (though the Sculptor now intervenes). It is bounded by Eridanus on the west, by Toucan on the south, and by Eridanus on the east. Its brightest star is of magnitude 2½.

Wiktionary

1. n. Archaic spelling of phoenix.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Gr. Myth.) A bird fabled to exist single, to be consumed by fire by its own act, and to rise again from its ashes. Hence, an emblem of immortality.
2. n. (Astron.) A southern constellation.
3. n. rare A marvelous person or thing.
4. n. Same as phenix.
5. n. (Bot.) A genus of palms including the date tree.