Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Alternative spelling of sibylline.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The theoretical complexities of time travel, which are related to the prophetic tradition in speculative fiction -- as seen in Mary Shelley's "sybilline" frame for The Last Man -- have continued to play a central role in popular science fiction.

    Note: Wells 2002

  • Playing the role of mystery man, he drops sybilline statements the way lesser stylists drop clichés, sows uncertainty for pleasure, and continually reverses himself in mid-field without so much as changing similes.

    Mercy 2009

  • The English version plays significantly worse than the French one, whose sybilline dialogue becomes more concretely, unbearably pretentious when Anglicized.

    Archive 2005-12-25 2005

  • A few of these sybilline leaves, however, were rescued from the flames and conveyed to his mother.

    The Life of Oliver Goldsmith 2004

  • Mostly they had been very sybilline, very vague, though.

    She Is The Darkness Cook, Glen 1997

  • Granny Hong Tray did not stay around to manage the results of her sybilline mutterings.

    She Is The Darkness Cook, Glen 1997

  • In here the tiny office space is the cave of an oracle: steam drifting, sybilline cries arriving out of the darkness ...

    Gravity's Rainbow Pynchon, Thomas 1978

  • The situation awoke old associations of the sybilline and vague predictions of the time-honored soothsayers -- their power -- their greatness -- their fall.

    Lady Rosamond's Secret A Romance of Fredericton Rebecca Agatha Armour

  • Ftatateeta seats herself on the step of the loggia, and sits there, watching the scene with sybilline intensity.

    Caesar and Cleopatra George Bernard Shaw 1903

  • If our account of the Six Days of Creation were a sybilline leaf of unknown origin, it would not be unreasonable to treat its revelations as little worth.

    Inspiration and Interpretation: Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford: With Preliminary Remarks: Being an Answer to a Volume Entitled "Essays and Reviews." 1813-1888 1861

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