chryselephantine love

chryselephantine

Definitions

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

  • adjective Made of gold and ivory, as certain pieces of sculpture or artwork in ancient Greece.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Composed of gold and ivory: specifically, in ancient art, applied to statues overlaid with plates of gold and ivory.

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

  • adjective Composed of, or adorned with, gold and ivory.

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

  • adjective Made of gold and ivory.

Etymologies

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

[Greek khrūselephantinos : khrūs-, khrūso-, chryso- + elephās, elephant-, ivory; see elephant.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Ancient Greek χρυσελεφάντινος (khruselephantinos), from χρυσός (khrusos, "gold") + ἐλεφάντινος (elephantinos, "of ivory").

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Examples

  • What boots it to tell that the arms and vesture of this "chryselephantine" statue are of pure gold; that the flesh portions are of gleaming ivory; that Phidias has wrought the whole so nobly together that this material, too sumptuous for common artists, becomes under his assembling the perfect substance for the manifestation of deity?

    A Day in Old Athens; a Picture of Athenian Life William Stearns Davis 1903

  • "chryselephantine;" that is, composed of ivory and gold; the parts representing flesh being of ivory laid on a core of wood or stone, while the drapery and other ornaments were of gold.

    The Age of Fable Thomas Bulfinch 1831

  • "chryselephantine;" that is, composed of ivory and gold; the parts representing flesh being of ivory laid on a core of wood or stone, while the drapery and other ornaments were of gold.

    The Age of Fable Thomas Bulfinch 1831

  • In the further wall was an alcove whose curtains, bestrung with pearls, were let down and I saw a light issuing therefrom; so I drew near and perceived that the light came from a precious stone as big as an ostrich egg, set at the upper end of the alcove upon a little chryselephantine couch of ivory and gold; and this jewel, blazing like the sun, cast its rays wide and side.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Every pedestal that held a golden vase of peacock feathers or a priceless work of art was chryselephantine—delicately carved ivory inlaid with gold.

    Antony and Cleopatra Colleen McCullough 2007

  • Every pedestal that held a golden vase of peacock feathers or a priceless work of art was chryselephantine—delicately carved ivory inlaid with gold.

    Antony and Cleopatra Colleen McCullough 2007

  • I mean the kind of colossal gold and ivory “chryselephantine” in academic jargon creations that once dominated the inside of the Parthenon or the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.

    A glimpse of Greece in Bologna 2006

  • I mean the kind of colossal gold and ivory “chryselephantine” in academic jargon creations that once dominated the inside of the Parthenon or the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.

    A Don's Life by Mary Beard - Times Online - WBLG: 2006

  • Its moisture helped preserve the ivory of the chryselephantine colossus, though temple priests also burnished it with more oil daily.

    See Delphi and Die Davis, Lindsey 2005

  • It was a young woman in silvery satins of a Renascence design; she had golden hair in two long shining ropes, and a face so startingly pale between them that she might have been chryselephantine — made, that is, like some old Greek statues, out of ivory and gold.

    The Complete Father Brown 2003

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