BYZANTINE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Byzantine

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/bˈɪzəntˌaɪn/ /bˈɪzəntˌin/ Listen

adjective

Byzantine adj. (Written also Bizantine) Of or pertaining to Byzantium.

Byzantine church, the Eastern or Greek church, as distinguished from the Western or Roman or Latin church. See under Greek.

Byzantine empire, the Eastern Roman or Greek empire from a. d. 364 or a. d. 395 to the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, a. d. 1453.

Byzantine historians, historians and writers (Zonaras, Procopius, etc.) who lived in the Byzantine empire.

Byzantine style (Arch.), a style of architecture developed in the Byzantine empire. Note: Its leading forms are the round arch, the dome, the pillar, the circle, and the cross. The capitals of the pillars are of endless variety, and full of invention. The mosque of St. Sophia, Constantinople, and the church of St. Mark, Venice, are prominent examples of Byzantine architecture.

noun

Byzantine, Byzant n. (Numis.) A gold coin, so called from being coined at Byzantium. See Bezant.

Byzantine n. A native or inhabitant of Byzantium, now Constantinople; sometimes, applied to an inhabitant of the modern city of Constantinople.

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Etymology of 'Byzantine'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Byzantine" Quotes from Famous Books

... sanction—some holy thing, some book or gospel or some new prophet from the desert, something which would cast over the whole ugly mechanism of German war the glamour of the old torrential raids which crumpled the Byzantine Empire and shook the walls of Vienna? Islam is a fighting creed, and the mullah still stands in the pulpit with the Koran in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. Supposing there is some Ark of the Covenant ...

— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... interesting about their own disappointment. And similarly even those who are truly irritated by the unfamiliar fashions of worship in a place like Jerusalem, do not know how to discover what is interesting in the very existence of what is irritating. For instance, they talk of Byzantine decay or barbaric delusion, and they generally go away with an impression that the ritual and symbolism is something dating from the Dark Ages. But if they would really note the details of their surroundings, or even of their sensations, they ...

— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... although it could quite as well be from [Greek: tziphra]. More rarely O'Creat uses [circle with bar], applying the name cyfra to both forms. Frater Sigsboto[204] (c. 1150) uses the same symbol. Other peculiar forms are noted by Heiberg[205] as being in use among the Byzantine Greeks in the fifteenth century. It is evident from the text that some of these writers did not understand the import of ...

— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... a vulgar type), exaggerated hips, and above all by the phallus. The demon turned into the clown or buffoon, but the phallus was kept as an emblem of his role, like the later cap and bells of the fool, until the fifth century of the Christian era in the West, and until the fall of the Byzantine empire. In the Hellenistic period the clown took the role of the Olympic god, and wore the phallus. The Phlyakes in lower Italy had the same emblem and it was worn in the atellan plays of the Romans.[1546] In the early Christian ...

— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... that the modern Greeks are in the main the descendants of the population that inhabited Greece in the earlier centuries of Byzantine rule. Owing to the operation of various causes, historical, social and economic, that population was composed of many heterogeneous elements and represented in very limited degree the race which repulsed the Persians and built the Parthenon. The internecine conflicts of ...

— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

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