Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The daughter of Tantalus who, after boasting that she had more children than Leto, suffered the killing of her own children by Artemis and Apollo, and turned to stone while bewailing their loss.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In Gr. mythology, the daughter of Tantalus, married to Amphion, king of Thebes.
- noun In zoology:
- noun A genus of trilobites.
- noun A genus of mollusks.
- noun A genus of African weaver-birds of the subfamily Viduinæ. N. ardens and N. concolor are examples.
- noun In botany, a genus of monocotyledonous plants belonging to the family Liliaceæ. See
Funkia .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun (Class. Myth.) The daughter of Tantalus, and wife of Amphion, king of Thebes. Her pride in her children provoked Apollo and Diana, who slew them all. Niobe herself was changed by the gods into stone.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- proper noun A daughter of
Tantalus - proper noun A female
given name
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun (Greek mythology) the daughter of Tantalus whose boasting about her children provoked Apollo and Artemis to slay them all; Niobe was turned to stone while bewailing her loss
Etymologies
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Examples
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a mutilated statue they call a Niobe (God knows why), with drapery blown back by the wind and appearing quite transparent.
The Greville Memoirs A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Volume 1 (of 3) Charles Greville 1829
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Phil called her Niobe, and declared that if she didn't look out, she'd float away on her tears; Fee threatened to put her in a picture, just as she looked; I coaxed and promised her one or two of my things, and Nora scolded: nothing had any effect, Kathie just wept straight on.
We Ten Or, The Story of the Roses Barbara Yechton 1901
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Scopas was his contemporary, and was the author of the celebrated group of Niobe, which is one of the chief ornaments of the gallery of sculpture at Florence.
The Old Roman World, : the Grandeur and Failure of Its Civilization. John Lord 1852
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In the same room with the Niobe is a head which struck me more -- the
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[110] The "Niobe," which exists only in a few fragments.
Plutarch's Morals 46-120? Plutarch
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[323] A parody of a passage in the lost tragedy of 'Niobe' of Aeschylus.
The Eleven Comedies, Volume 2 446? BC-385? BC Aristophanes
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Is Aeagrus [67] accused, he is not acquitted before he has recited a passage from 'Niobe' [68] and he chooses the finest.
The Eleven Comedies, Volume 2 446? BC-385? BC Aristophanes
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He could not wield the painter's brush, but the great sculptor had yet power to depict the grief of a "Niobe," the agony of the "Laocoön," or the majesty of a "Moses."
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 Various
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Shall we have the "Niobe" on the Atlantic and the "Rainbow" on the Pacific, and then, if war breaks out, ask New Zealand to take care of our fleet.
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Maugham could hardly have bettered his study of an impulsive and exigent woman, rising at the outset to the height of a bold and womanly choice in defiance of social prejudice and family tradition, and then relapsing under the disillusions of marriage into the weakest failings of her class, rising again, from a self-torturing neurotic into a kind of Niobe at the death of her baby.
When Winter Comes to Main Street Grant Martin Overton 1908
ruzuzu commented on the word Niobe
HAMLET:
O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead!—nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother,
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month,—
Let me not think on't,—Frailty, thy name is woman!—
A little month; or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father's body
Like Niobe, all tears;—why she, even she,—
O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer,—married with mine uncle,
My father's brother; but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month;
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married:— O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good;
But break my heart,—for I must hold my tongue.
- Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 2
August 6, 2010