Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A princess of Athens who, after being raped by her brother-in-law, Tereus, was avenged by her sister, Procne, and was later turned into a swallow or nightingale while fleeing Tereus.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A genus of oscine passerine birds, the type of which is the nightingale: now usually called Luscinia or Daulias.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The nightingale; philomel.
  • noun (Zoöl.) A genus of birds including the nightingales.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin Philomēla, from Greek Philomēlē.]

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Examples

  • The story of "Philomela," "penned to approve women's chastity," is the best of Greene's tales, and approaches more closely the modern novel than any work of the time.

    A History of English Prose Fiction Bayard Tuckerman

  • It comes chiefly from Austria and Siberia; yet Greene in his "Philomela," 1615, speaks of "the Hyssop growing in America, that is liked of strangers for the smell, and hated of the inhabitants for the operation, being as prejudicial to the one as delightsome to the other."

    The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare Henry Nicholson Ellacombe 1868

  • Hicks told me this afternoon that 'Philomela' was by Shakspere. "

    The Plastic Age Percy Marks 1923

  • In Greek myth, weaving is how women tell their stories, whether it is Arachne, Philomela, Helen or Penelope.

    Texture : A.E. Stallings : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation 2007

  • Singer is best known for her volume of poetry, Poems on Several Occasions by Philomela (1696), as well as her devotional prose.

    Editorial Notes to 'Letter to the Women of England' 2007

  • Many of the poets when they make mention of the nightingale (Philomela) apply to the bird the epithet Daulian.

    The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides 2007

  • For Tereus dwelt in Daulia, a part of the region which is now called Phocis but in those days was inhabited by Thracians, and in that country Itys suffered at the hands of the women Procnè and Philomela.

    The History of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides 2007

  • It was the middle-aged dipsy nymph I had treated like a prostitute, who called herself Philomela.

    See Delphi and Die Davis, Lindsey 2005

  • I had warned her previously that I thought Philomela was not all there. '

    See Delphi and Die Davis, Lindsey 2005

  • So you do have a wife! 'commented the so-called Philomela.

    See Delphi and Die Davis, Lindsey 2005

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