Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Pertaining to the Pactolus, a river in ancient Lydia famous for its golden sands.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • (One or two of them, you may perhaps chance to remember, sent short pieces to the "Pactolian" some time since, which were

    Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • (One or two of them, you may perhaps chance to remember, sent short pieces to the "Pactolian" some time since, which were

    Autocrat of the Breakfast Table Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851

  • "Do not dull people bore you?" said one of the lady-boarders, -- the same that sent me her autograph-book last week with a request for a few original stanzas, not remembering that "The Pactolian" pays me five dollars a line for every thing I write in its columns.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 01, November, 1857 A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics Various

  • Little rivulets that ran gleaming like silver threads -- the Pactolian streams of childhood's home and lover's whisperings -- now swell and deepen and complain, as though angry with the burdens of the falling clouds.

    Lancashire Idylls (1898) Marshall Mather

  • Scores of tunnels have been run into the mountain to get at the gravel of this Pactolian river.

    Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania Jewett Castello Gilson

  • It knows that if Europe were to pay it in gold, it would be destroyed by the Pactolian stream.

    The Outlook for Canada 1922

  • Pactolian flood flowing toward Leopoldsville and the sea.

    The Pools of Silence 1907

  • It was shortly after this boom that the gravel surrounding the rich patch became very gravelly indeed, and it was determined that we should buy a small battery and begin to crush the quartz from which the gold was supposed to flow in a Pactolian stream.

    The Ivory Child Henry Rider Haggard 1890

  • This instinctive action of the mind, although largely unconscious, is by no means irresponsible; it may be directed and controlled; it may be turned, by such control, into a Pactolian stream, enriching us while we rest and ennobling us while we play.

    Books and Culture Hamilton Wright Mabie 1880

  • Pactolian sands of every river where Midas has bathed, and in many rocks of the earth.

    Among the Forces Henry White Warren 1871

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