Definitions

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

  • noun Greek & Roman Mythology A priest or votary of Bacchus.
  • noun A boisterous reveler.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Worshiping Bacchus; reveling.
  • noun A priest, priestess, or votary of Bacchus; a bacchanal.
  • noun One addicted to intemperance or riotous revelry.
  • noun A name given in Germany, in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, to wandering scholars who traveled from one institution of learning to another.

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

  • adjective Bacchanalian; fond of drunken revelry; wine-loving; reveling; carousing.
  • noun A priest of Bacchus.
  • noun A bacchanal; a reveler.

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

  • noun A priest of Bacchus.
  • noun A bacchanal; a reveler.
  • adjective Bacchanalian; fond of drunken revelry; wine-loving; reveling; carousing.

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

  • noun (classical mythology) a priest or votary of Bacchus
  • noun someone who engages in drinking bouts
  • noun a drunken reveller; a devotee of Bacchus

Etymologies

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

[Latin bacchāns, bacchant-, present participle of bacchārī, to celebrate the festival of Bacchus, from Bacchus, Bacchus; see Bacchus.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin bacchāntem, accusative singular of bacchāns ("reveling"), present active participle of bacchor ("celebrate rites of Bacchus; revel"), from Bacchus ("the god of wine"), from Ancient Greek Βάκχος (Bakkhos).

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Examples

  • A fat, stalwart, bacchant, boorish race they are, giving signs of anything but fasting and flagellation; and I know of nothing that would so dissipate the romance which invests monks and nuns in the eyes of some, like bringing a ship-load of them over to this country, and letting their admirers see and smell them.

    Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge James Aitken Wylie 1849

  • He took the rose-colored little book, and shouting tossed it to the ceiling, and sprang about like a mad bacchant, and finally threw himself upon the carpet, rolling over and over like a frolicksome, good-natured child upon its nurse's lap.

    Old Fritz and the New Era Peter [Translator] Langley 1843

  • Sillakes, while Jason handed over to one of the members of the chorus the dress of Pentheus, and, laying hold of the head of Crassus, and, putting on the air of a bacchant, he sung these verses with great enthusiasm: --

    Plutarch's Lives Volume III. 46-120? Plutarch 1839

  • Garage door opener parts bacchant is now uncousinly for typhlopidae, subjoining and treacly uncharted distortion divided parji.

    Rational Review 2009

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