Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An idiom or custom peculiar to the Greeks.
- noun The civilization and culture of ancient Greece.
- noun Admiration for and adoption of Greek ideas, style, or culture.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A peculiarity of the Greek language; a word, phrase, idiom, or construction used or formed in the Greek manner.
- noun The spirit and tendency regarded as especially characteristic of the Greek race, historically considered, and as best exemplified in its pursuit of intellectual and physical culture, and its predilection for the noble, the strong, and the beautiful in thought and action. See extract under Hebraism, 2.
- noun Conformity to Greek speech and ideas; imitation or adoption of Greek characteristics in any respect.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A phrase or form of speech in accordance with genius and construction or idioms of the Greek language; a Grecism.
- noun The type of character of the ancient Greeks, who aimed at culture, grace, and amenity, as the chief elements in human well-being and perfection.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any of the characteristics of ancient
Greek culture, civilization, principles and ideals, includinghumanism , reason, the pursuit of knowledge and the arts, moderation and civic responsibility. - noun The culture and civilization of the
Hellenistic period. - noun The admiration for and adoption of ancient Greek culture, ideas and civilization.
- noun The national character or culture of Greece.
- noun The belief in and worship of the Greek
gods .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the principles and ideals associated with classical Greek civilization
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The author of 2 Maccabees depicted instead a brutal civil war, an internal struggle within the Jewish community between "Judaism" and "Hellenism" -- words that he in fact coined.
Shawna Dolansky: The Truth(s) About Hanukkah Shawna Dolansky 2011
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Three are generic names, namely Hellenism, Samaritanism, and Judaism.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13: Revelation-Stock 1840-1916 1913
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For the Homeric civilization was not a different stage of development of that same civilization which appears when the first beginnings of what we are accustomed to call Hellenism are presented to us; it was totally diverse, and in many respects more complex and more splendid.
The Sea-Kings of Crete James Baikie 1898
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Hellenism, which is the principle pre-eminently of intellectual light (our modern culture may have more colour, the medieval spirit greater heat and profundity, but Hellenism is pre-eminent for light), has always been most effectively conceived by those who have crept into it out of an intellectual world in which the sombre elements predominate.
The Renaissance: studies in art and poetry Walter Pater 1866
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Hellenism, which is the principle pre-eminently of intellectual light (our modern culture may have more colour, the medieval spirit greater heat and profundity, but Hellenism is pre-eminent for light), has always been most effectively conceived by those who have crept into it out of an intellectual world in which the sombre elements predominate.
The Renaissance Studies in Art and Poetry Walter Pater 1866
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a long essay on Plato in a book called "Hellenism" -- very good.
Margot Asquith, an Autobiography - Two Volumes in One Margot Asquith 1904
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Although Babylonia may have been the first Jewish exile community, it was among the Greeks that assimilation first became an issue (so much so that in those days Jews called assimilation "Hellenism").
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In the early nineteenth century Greece was the focus of a cultural movement, an idealizing "Hellenism," and international political involvement in the War of Independence against the Ottoman
Note: Greece 2002
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Western Europe is apt to depreciate modern 'Hellenism', chiefly because its ambitious denomination rather ludicrously challenges comparison with a vanished glory, while any one who has studied its rise must perceive that it has little more claim than western Europe itself to be the peculiar heir of ancient Greek culture.
The Balkans A History of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey Nevill Forbes 1906
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'Hellenism' and nationality have become for him identical ideas; and when at last the hour of deliverance struck, he welcomed the Greek armies that marched into his country from the south and the east, after the fall of Yannina in the spring of 1913, with the same enthusiasm with which all the enslaved populations of native Greek dialect greeted the consummation of a century's hopes.
The Balkans A History of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey Nevill Forbes 1906
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