Definition:
Using an appropriate adjective (often habitually) to characterize a person or thing. Adjective: epithetic. See also:
Etymology:
From the Greek, "added"Examples and Observations:
- "heartfelt thanks," "wine-dark sea," "blood-red sky," "fleet-footed Achilles," "stone-cold heart"
- "Children, I grant, should be innocent; but when the epithet is applied to men, or women, it is but a civil term for weakness."
(Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) - "In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters."
(Paul Gauguin) - "Bravely bold Sir Robin rode forth from Camelot. He was not afraid to die, oh brave Sir Robin. He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways, brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Robin."
(Monty Python and the Holy Grail) - "The fixed epithet, a special variety found in epic poetry, is the repeated use of an adjective or phrase for the same subject; thus in Homer's Odyssey, the wife Penelope is always 'prudent,' the son Telemachus is always 'sound minded,' and Odysseus himself is 'many minded.'"
(Stephen Adams, Poetic Designs, Broadview Press, 1997) - "As a result of the feminist revolution, 'feminine' becomes an abusive epithet."
(Wyndham Lewis) - "The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea."
(James Joyce, Ulysses) - "'I am working on a piece about nationalism with a focus on epithet as a smear word,' writes David Binder, my longtime Times colleague, 'which was still a synonym for 'delineation' or 'characterization' in my big 1942 Webster’s but now seems to be almost exclusively a synonym for ‘derogation’ or ‘smear word.’ . . . In the past century, [epithet] blossomed as 'a word of abuse,' today gleefully seized upon to describe political smears."
(William Safire, "Presents of Mind," The New York Times, June 22, 2008)
Pronunciation: EP-i-tet
