Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- A small crater lake of southern Italy near the Tyrrhenian Sea west of Naples. Because of its gloomy aspect and intense sulfuric vapors, now extinguished, the ancient Romans regarded it as the entrance to the underworld.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word Averno.
Examples
-
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Facilis Descensus Averno:
-
Averno is a crater lake west of Naples that the ancient Romans saw as the gateway to the underworld and that Glück uses as a unifying metaphor for a book about the dialogue between life and death that intensifies in the last trimester of life.
-
She is the author of eleven books of poetry, including, most recently, Averno Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006.
-
This interpretation suggests the fatalistic vision of Averno, a collection of linked poems that glide back and forth between myth and modern life.
-
_Facilis descensus Averno_, and I suppose Mr. Henderson, in his statement, is trying to save me from the inconveniences of this trip.
Reveries of a Schoolmaster Francis B. Pearson
-
It should be "facilis descensus Averno," _easy is the descent to Avernus_.
The Short-story William Patterson Atkinson
-
"Facilis descensus Averno; sed revocare gradum, hoc opus, hic labor est."
The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner John Wilkinson
-
Pallas and Diana in the Sicilian mountains -- altior ac nulla comitum certante, prius quam palluit et viso pulsus decor omnis Averno (v. 346).
Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal Harold Edgeworth Butler 1914
-
Do you intend to restrict the family to the back stairs, which by your showing are, like the famous _descensus Averno_, wonderfully easy to go down, but mighty hard to get up again?
-
It is useless now to go into discussions of how better measures might have been obtained, or how bad ones might have been avoided -- the whole is a striking illustration of the evils attending first departures from principle -- the "facilis descencus Averno."
bilby commented on the word Averno
Honestly I feel that this has good metaphor potential.
July 29, 2022
tankhughes commented on the word Averno
Oh! In DnD, Avernus is the first level of the Nine Hells. Good to know it's in Italy.
July 29, 2022