Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- adj. Of or relating to Parthia or its people, language, or culture.
- adj. Delivered in or as if in retreat: "a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy” ( Bret Harte).
- n. A native or inhabitant of Parthia.
- n. The Iranian language of the Parthians.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- adj. Relating to Parthia or Parthians.
- adj. Delivered as if in retreat. (An allusion to the Parthian battle tactic of firing arrows backwards from horseback while apparently in retreat.)
- n. A native or inhabitant of Parthia.
- n. An extinct Western Iranian language that was spoken in Parthia.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- adj. Of or pertaining to ancient Parthia, in Asia.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Of or pertaining to Parthia, an ancient region in Persia, which from the third century b. c. to the third century a. d. formed the nucleus of an important Asiatic kingdom.
- n. A native or an inhabitant of Parthia.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adj. pertaining to Parthia or its people or language or culture
- n. a native or inhabitant of Parthia
- n. the Iranian language spoken in the Parthian kingdom (250 BC to AD 226)
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Examples
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While Cicero was busy with the condition of his province; his attention was distracted by what we may call a Parthian "scare."
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Should there be among my auditors any teachers who look upon the severity of the preceding remarks as an attack upon themselves, let them spare their resentment, by reflecting that the present company is always excepted, and that critics carry on a kind of Parthian warfare discharging their shafts, not at those before their faces, but those behind their backs.
North Carolina Schools and Academies 1790-1840 A Documentary History
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Americans for adopting a "Parthian" mode of warfare, instead of
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And lastly, he could throw a knife backwards while running at full speed with such strength and precision of aim that this new kind of Parthian arrow would go whistling through the air to hide two inches of its iron head in a tree trunk no thicker than a man's thigh.
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Follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony from the time of the Parthian War to Cleopatra's suicide.
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We are committed to a narrative of Zoroastrian continuity from ancient times and so have some difficulty in understanding not only what the “Magians” might be if not “Zoroastrian,” but what might have happened to them during the four centuries of Parthian power.
Matthew Yglesias » Toy Drives Checking Immigration Status of Children
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However, in the absence of evidence of continuity, we are also free to assume radical discontinuity, and this seems safer in the light of the disappearance of Elamite and, more importantly, the lack of Parthian rulers with Achaemenian names.
Matthew Yglesias » Toy Drives Checking Immigration Status of Children
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This suggests that Romans themselves probably stirred up one of the myriad subject peoples of Parthia to themselves revolt, since the Parthian Great Kings spent basically all of their reigns in the saddle, or that Nero was paying them an enormous amount to stay out, or that the Romans got insanely lucky, and the Great King was involved somewhere else, either warring in the East or facing a civil war of his own.
Matthew Yglesias » Toy Drives Checking Immigration Status of Children
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They focus on the successful cross-pollination of cultures at Dura-Europos, how Greek, Jewish, Parthian, Roman and Christian cultures synthesized and abided in harmony.
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There's a featured book each month, often from a small press such as Parthian.
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