Myth & LegendGreek → English
Apollonian
/ˌæpəˈləʊniən/adjective
Ordered, lucid and bounded, in the manner attributed to Apollo.
The Greek roots
Ἀπόλλων
Apóllōn
Apollo, god of light and order
Literally: “of Apollo”
Follow a root:Ἀπόλλων2 words
The story of the word
The Greeks could not agree where Apollo's name came from either. Aeschylus puns it on ἀπόλλυμι, to destroy, when Cassandra names him her destroyer; modern philologists more often point to ἀπέλλαι, the Dorian assembly, and argue for a god of civic gatherings. Nietzsche's use in 1872 fixed the English adjective: Apollonian for form, clarity, boundary and the dream image, set against Dionysian dissolution, with tragedy as the place the two meet.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
ApolloApollyon
In a sentence
The facade is Apollonian to the millimetre and the garden behind it is not.
Her prose is Apollonian; her plots are anything but.