SCARAB • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Scarab

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

Listen

noun

Scarabee, Scarab n.

(Zool.) Any one of numerous species of lamellicorn beetles of the genus Scarabaeus, or family Scarabaeidae, especially the sacred, or Egyptian, species (Scarabaeus sacer, and Scarabaeus Egyptiorum).

(Egyptian Archaeology, Jewelry) A stylized representation of a scarab beetle carved in stone or faience, or made in baked clay, usually in a conventionalized form in which the beetle has its legs held closely at its sides, and commonly having an inscription on the flat underside; a symbol of resurrection, used by the ancient Egyptians as an ornament or a talisman, and in modern times used in jewelry, usually by engraving the formalized scarab design on cabuchon stones. Also used attributively; as, a scarab bracelet (a bracelet containing scarabs); a ring with a scarab (the carved stone itelf).

See images of 'Scarab'

Etymology of 'Scarab'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Scarab" Quotes from Famous Books

... Central African adventure. I take it that this book is partly true, and partly an effort of the imagination. However this may be, it has given me an idea. It happens, how you will see in the accompanying manuscript (which together with the Scarab, the 'Royal Son of the Sun,' and the original sherd, I am sending to you by hand), that my ward, or rather my adopted son Leo Vincey and myself have recently passed through a real African adventure, of a nature so much more marvellous than the one which you ...

— She • H. Rider Haggard

... don't—not at present. There was a tomb opened at one of the camps, not long ago, which told a tragic story of the end of robbery and plunder. The roof had fallen in while the burglar was busy unwrapping the cloths from the dead mummy. He was evidently trying to get at the heart-scarab, I suppose, and at the jewels which the windings held in their place. He had been smothered, taken in the act. Probably he had left his fellow-plunderers at the entrance; the roof may have looked unsafe, but he had hoped to collect all ...

— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... give an added value to everything except an egg. In my own case I know how it was with regard to the Egyptian scarab. For years I felt that I could never rest satisfied until I had gone to Egypt and had personally broken into the tomb of some sleeping Pharaoh or some crumbly old Rameses, and with my own hands had ravished from it a mummified specimen of that fabled beetle which the ...

— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... went up, finally, to the ladder that had been set up against the Mayflower's bilge, and began the ascent, catching the floundering cope underneath his feet on every rung. And the vestment of white and gold caught the afternoon sun and gleamed afar like the shell of a bright climbing scarab. But when he had blessed everything to the Rector's full content, he withdrew with his assistant, and the throng rushed for the boat like an army ...

— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the orchestra interested Twinkle more than anything else. They were seated upon the broad top of a big toadstool at one side, and the musicians were all beetles and big-bugs. A fat water-beetle played a bass fiddle as big and fat as himself, and two pretty ladybugs played the violins. A scarab, brightly colored with scarlet and black, tooted upon a long horn, and a sand-beetle made the sound of a drum with its wings. Then there was a coleopto, making shrill sounds like a flute—only of course Twinkle didn't know the ...

— Twinkle and Chubbins - Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland • L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum