Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. A youth between 18 and 20 years of age in ancient Greece.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. A young man, especially an 18-20 year old in ancient Greece undergoing military training.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In Greek antiquity, particularly at Athens, a young man, the son of a citizen, between the ages of 18 and 20.
- n. A genus of lichens having the thallus small and branched and composed chiefly of the algal element. The apothecia are small and round. The species are few and occur on wet rocks and earth.
Etymologies
Examples
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The violence which existed as a latent background in the story of the ephebe and of the bear now moves into full sight.
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Matt Gubler, the bright-eyed ephebe in Wes Anderson's upcoming film, was performing magic tricks.
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Let us not hesitate to admit that my eminent friend omitted to give us the name of this ephebe in the course of his demonstrations.
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Platonic ephebe and a Byronic 'Prisoner of Chillon', each blinded by the light of truth or of freedom.
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He was Carl Schirmer, the avatar of ennui, the eternal ephebe, always more eager for ambience than destiny.
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His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe.
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Created about 20-10 B.C., the Roman bronze figure of an ephebe (youth) was excavated in 1925 in a well-appointed residence, now called the House of the Ephebe, off Pompeii's Via dell'Abbondanza.
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He moved to Athens when he was 18 to fulfill his required military service as an ephebe, but left again shortly thereafter when his parents wer expelled from Samos, along with the other Athenians, when Athens lost the island to Colophon for a time and continued to study philosophy and began to attract disciples.
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Each passage when complete makes sense of a sort.1 Hamish The lad on babycHAM IS Half tight4 maniple Give hiM A NIP LEst he faint9 pea-souper I wouldn't give anyone of this tyPE A SOU PERsonally10 salad Sadie waS A LADy11 I wish I expect kIWIS Hate, being grounded12 Rimington This will raise pump-pRIMING TO New levels13 esparto Stags had a feast and the roES PARTOok15 ephebe Watch out for the *s/black sheEP: HE BEat all criminal records17 hordes Go to beacH OR DESert for *b/sand19 chimera I don't want this on my patCH; I'M ERAsing it22 refectory Paris pREFECT OR York, sheriff?
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Even as Oberon’s right hand man (and one can’t help thinking of the Prospero/Ariel relationship here, wondering if there’s a sense of the ephebe-as-male-muse to the queer-writer-as-mage,) he’s empowered in his lawless mischief.
mollusque commented on the word ephebe
I felt lacquered from head to foot, like that naked ephebe, the bright clou of a pagan procession, who died of dermal asphyxia in his coat of golden varnish.
--Vladimir Nabokov, 1974, Look at the Harlequins! p. 206
June 13, 2009