Definitions

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

  • noun Greek Mythology Apollo, the god of the sun.
  • noun The sun.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun (Greek mythology) Greek god of light; god of prophecy and poetry and music and healing; son of Zeus and Leto; twin brother of Artemis

Etymologies

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

[Middle English phebus, from Latin Phoebus, from Greek phoibos, shining, Apollo.]

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Examples

  • _Phoebus_ -- The Apollo of the Romans; the Sun. _Phoebus Apollo_ -- Phoebus the Destroyer, or the Purifier.

    Philothea A Grecian Romance Lydia Maria Francis Child 1841

  • Thus Phoebus; and mingled outcries of great gladness uprose; all ask, what is that city? whither calls Phoebus our wandering, and bids us return?

    The Aeneid of Virgil 70 BC-19 BC Virgil

  • I have one called Phoebus, because he drives a chariot drawn by six rats.

    Simon the Jester William John Locke 1896

  • He has also much fertility in epithets; these being fitted to their objects properly and naturally have the force of proper names, as when he gives to the several gods each some proper designation, so he calls Zeus the “all-wise and high thundering,” and the Sun, Hyperion, “advancing aloft,” and Apollo, Phoebus, that is, shining.

    Essays and Miscellanies 2004

  • We were even shown a bloom called the Phoebus, about as like to our

    The Lost Dahlia Mary Russell Mitford 1821

  • [46] "He calls Phoebus the god of gold, since the virtue of his beams creates it."

    The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) Christopher Marlowe 1578

  • On the day of their wedding, he confesses, he will think that either 'Phoebus' steeds are foundered/Or Night kept chained below '.

    Shakespeare Bevington, David 2002

  • There is already an organization, a human one, known as "Phoebus," the international light-bulb cartel, headquartered in Switzerland.

    Gravity's Rainbow Pynchon, Thomas 1978

  • The rule which I have tried to follow has been this: when the word has been hopelessly Latinised, as 'Phoebus' has been, I have left it as it usually stands; but in other cases I have tried to keep the plain Greek spelling, except when it would have seemed pedantic, or when, as in the word 'Tiphus,' I should have given an altogether wrong notion of the sound of the word.

    Heroes, or Greek Fairy Tales for My Children Charles Kingsley 1847

  • That the "Phoebus" is hackneyed, and a school-boy image, is an accidental fault, dependent on the age in which the author wrote, and not deduced from the nature of the thing.

    Biographia Literaria Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1803

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