Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In Roman antiquity, a monument marking a place that had been struck by lightning.
  • Same as bidentate.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Having two teeth.

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

  • adjective phonetics articulated with both the upper and lower teeth

Etymologies

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Examples

  • His church was a ghastly ruin, an evitandum bidental, of which the very site would be thenceforward shunned as a haunt of demons, which no lustration would ever purify.

    Gathering Clouds: A Tale of the Days of St. Chrysostom 1831-1903 1895

  • For the case of a man killed by lightning, see note 4 on p. 263; the body was not burnt but buried, and the grave became a _bidental_, and

    The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus W. Warde Fowler 1884

  • Trifte jaces lucis, evitandumqiie bidental, f Idcirco ftolidam praebet tibi vellere barbam Jnppiter? aut quidnam eft, qua tu mercede Deonim

    A. Persii Flacci et Dec. Jun. Juvenalis satirae: Ad optimas editiones ... Persius, Juvenal , Sulpicia, C . Lucilius, Gaius Lucilius, Johann August Ernesti, Societas Bipontina, Johann Albert Fabricius 1785

  • Minxerit in patrios ctneres, sn trifte bidental Moverit inceftus: certe furit, ac velut urfus,

    The Works of Horace 1780

  • Still to the left of this, uprose the Palatine, the earliest settled of the hills of Rome, with the old walls of Romulus, and the low straw-built shed, wherein that mighty son of Mars dwelt when he governed his wild robber-clan; and the bidental marking the spot where lightning from the monarch of Olympus, called on by undue rites, consumed Hostilius and his house; were still preserved with reverential worship, and on its eastern peak, the time-honoured shrine of Stator Jove.

    The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) Henry William Herbert 1832

  • Such spots were encircled with a low wall and called _puteal_ from their resemblance to a well, or _bidental_ from the sacrifice there of a lamb as a _piaculum_; the bolt was supposed to be thus buried, and the place became _religiosum_. [

    The Religious Experience of the Roman People From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus W. Warde Fowler 1884

  • _ I must guard against its being as fatal in a different sense; otherwise I may be myself the _triste bidental_. {

    Gryll Grange Thomas Love Peacock 1825

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