SPHINX • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Sphinx

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/sfɪŋks/ Listen

noun

Sphinx n.

(a)

In Egyptian art, an image of granite or porphyry, having a human head, or the head of a ram or of a hawk, upon the wingless body of a lion. "The awful ruins of the days of old... Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx."

(b)

On Greek art and mythology, a she-monster, usually represented as having the winged body of a lion, and the face and breast of a young woman. Note: The most famous Grecian sphinx, that of Thebes in Boeotia, is said to have proposed a riddle to the Thebans, and killed those who were unable to guess it. The enigma was solved by OEdipus, whereupon the sphinx slew herself. "Subtle as sphinx."

Hence: A person of enigmatical character and purposes, especially in politics and diplomacy.

(Zool.) Any one of numerous species of large moths of the family Sphingidae; called also hawk moth. See also tomato worm. Note: The larva is a stout naked caterpillar which, when at rest, often assumes a position suggesting the Egyptian sphinx, whence the name.

(Zool.) The Guinea, or sphinx, baboon (Cynocephalus sphinx).

Sphinx baboon (Zool.), a large West African baboon (Cynocephalus sphinx), often kept in menageries.

Sphinx moth. (Zool.) Same as Sphinx, 3.

See images of 'Sphinx'

Etymology of 'Sphinx'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Sphinx" Quotes from Famous Books

... uglier things in Egypt. Look at some of those fifth-rate pyramids up the river. When it comes to shape they are pretty much the same as this one, and when it comes to size, they look like warts beside it. And look at the Sphinx. There is something that cost four millions if it cost a copper—and what is it now? A burlesque! A caricature! An architectural cripple! So long as it was new, good enough! It was a showy piece of work. People came all the way from Sicyonia and Tyre to gape at it. Everybody said ...

— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... conservatory was a door, the entrance to the Egyptian temple. It was square and heavy-browed, flanked by short thick columns rising from a base of sculptured papyrus-leaves, and flowering in lotus capitals. Three marble steps led to the threshold, while on either side reclined a sphinx in polished granite, softened, however, by a delicate flowering vine, which had been trained to cling round their necks. On the deep panels of the door were mystic emblems carved in relief. A line of hieroglyphics inscribed the ...

— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... instincts and automatic reflexes, is there no way out anywhere? Is there perhaps some ground for hope and consolation in the thought that we, of the twentieth century, no longer see ourselves, Man, as something final and fixed? Darwin changed Fate from a static sphinx into a chameleon flux. Just as certainly as man has arisen from something whose bones alone remain as reminders of his existence, we are persuaded man himself is to be the ancestor of another creature, differing as much from him as he from the Chimpanzi, and who, if he will not supplant ...

— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... idea of the justice of God and the things which had befallen him, is constantly haunting him; it has a sting in it far worse than all the other misery with which he is tormented; but it is not fixed in the hopelessness of hell by an accepted explanation more frightful than itself. Let the world-sphinx put as many riddles as she will, she can devour no man while he waits an answer from the world-redeemer. Job refused the explanation of his friends because he knew it false; to have accepted such as would ...

— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... himself looking into a pair of steady, serious, inscrutable eyes. No white woman can hide her thoughts behind such an impenetrable mask as the squaw. Surely the Indian face might well have served as a model for the Sphinx. ...

— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

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