Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various marine mollusks of the class Polyplacophora that live on rocks and have shells consisting of eight overlapping calcareous plates.
- noun A tunic worn by men and women in ancient Greece.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A tunic; a usual garment of both men and women among the ancient Greeks.
- noun In zoöl.: The typical genus of the family Chitonidæ (which see).
- noun A member of the genus Chiton or family Chitonidæ.
- noun In zoology, an investing membrane or sheath.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun An under garment among the ancient Greeks, nearly representing the modern shirt.
- noun (Zoöl.) One of a group of gastropod mollusks, with a shell composed of eight movable dorsal plates. See
Polyplacophora .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A loose,
woolen tunic , worn by both men and women inAncient Greece . - noun Any of various rock-clinging marine
molluscs of the classPolyplacophora , including the genusChiton .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun primitive elongated bilaterally symmetrical marine mollusk having a mantle covered with eight calcareous plates
- noun a woolen tunic worn by men and women in ancient Greece
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Her purple chiton is gathered in classic folds across her bosom, and on her shoulders she wears a mantle of the same color.
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Her chiton was the crimson of the royal House of Apepi: it stood out brilliantly, a speck of colour in the bleakness of bare rock and sand.
Warlock Smith, Wilbur 2001
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A young girl is about to join together on her left shoulder the chiton, which is fastened over the right shoulder by means of an agraffe.
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We describe the oldest chiton, which is the oldest animal fossil, the oldest evidence for the trilobite ancestor; we believe we've solved the Shonisaur murder mystery; and now we're announcing the identity of this serial killer, the Triassic kraken.
NPR Topics: News 2011
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A tiny marine creature called a chiton might hold the key to better artificial teeth and bones.
NPR Topics: News 2011
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The soldiers divided "the clothes," or the "the cloak," "ta imatia" into four pieces, that is, Jesus' outer garments, not the tunic, the "chiton," which was the inner garment, which was in direct contact with his body.
Archive 2008-03-16 papabear 2008
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[*] Workingmen often wore no himation, and had a kind of chiton (an exömis) which was especially arranged to leave them with free use of their arms.
A Day in Old Athens; a Picture of Athenian Life William Stearns Davis 1903
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Over the chiton is the aegis, much less long behind than in earlier art (cf.
A History of Greek Art Frank Bigelow Tarbell 1886
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The girl in the chiton stands a-tip toe and whispers in his ear.
September 29th, 2009 m_francis 2009
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Her garments are the basic chiton, peplos or stola.
chained_bear commented on the word chiton
"Tympana, or kettle drums, have been found at the shrine of Artemis Limnatis in southern Greece, and this instrument, Lawler claims, was 'helpful in inducing frenzy.' Dances to Artemis were known to be especially wild in Sparta—though whether in a religious or sexual sense we do not know, only that women and girls danced wearing 'only one chiton,' or the equivalent of a slip."
—Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 33
March 12, 2009