EPITHET • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Epithet

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/ˈɛpəθˌɛt/ Listen

noun

Epithet n.

An adjective expressing some quality, attribute, or relation, that is properly or specially appropriate to a person or thing; as, a just man; a verdant lawn. "A prince (Henry III.) to whom the epithet "worthless" seems best applicable."

Term; expression; phrase. "Stuffed with epithets of war."

Synonyms: Epithet, Title. The name epithet was formerly extended to nouns which give a title or describe character (as the "epithet of liar"), but is now confined wholly to adjectives. Some rhetoricians, as Whately, restrict it still further, considering the term epithet as belonging only to a limited class of adjectives, viz., those which add nothing to the sense of their noun, but simply hold forth some quality necessarily implied therein; as, the bright sun, the lofty heavens, etc. But this restriction does not prevail in general literature. Epithet is sometimes confounded with application, which is always a noun or its equivalent.

verb

Epithet v. t. To describe by an epithet. (R.) "Never was a town better epitheted."

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Etymology of 'Epithet'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Epithet" Quotes from Famous Books

... insidious suggestions and doubts he carefully spread abroad, the queen, as he saw with pleasure, looked on the new commander of the National Guards as a "Grandison-Cromwell" (Mirabeau's damaging epithet), whose concealed ambition aimed at the constableship of France, as a step to that dread of French sovereigns, the "Mayorship of the Palace;" and hence the court systematically declined the aids ...

— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... fealty to the real thing in whatever we did. This we felt, as we had felt it long before, to be the sole source of beauty and of art, and we warmed ourselves at each other's hearts in our devotion to it, amidst a misunderstanding environment which we did not characterize by so mild an epithet. Boyesen, indeed, out-realisted me, in the polemics of our aesthetics, and sometimes when an unbeliever was by, I willingly left to my friend the affirmation of our faith, not without some quaking at his unsparing strenuousness in disciplining the heretic. ...

— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... cuckoo ever unkind: the significance of this epithet is amply explained by the poem of "The Cuckoo and ...

— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... whom does this epithet apply better? To us who dress as the generality of men, thus leaving no doubt as to our sex and freeing our consciences from the ignominious Roman yoke, direct ourselves by that straight and narrow way which leads to salvation; ...

— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray

... sum which he was now to receive. What shall we say? The vender is designated by Mr. Schlichtegroll, in the preface of the last sale catalogue of the duplicates of the Public Library (1815, 8vo.) as "bibliopola honestissimus"—and let us hope that he merits the epithet. Besides, books of this excessive rarity are objects of mere caprice and fancy. To return to this "bibliopola honestissimus," I looked out a few more tempting articles, of the Aldine character,[68] and receiving ...

— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

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