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Definition: Sisyphus |
SisyphusNoun1. (Greek legend) a king in ancient Greece who offended Zeus and whose punishment was to roll a huge boulder to the top of a steep hill; each time the boulder neared the top it rolled back down and Sisyphus was forced to start again. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "Sisyphus" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1374. (references) |
Etymology: Sisyphus \Sis"y*phus\, noun. [Latin expression Sisyphus, Sisyphus, from the Greek expression.]. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Literature | Sisyphus (Latin; Sisuphos, Greek). A fraudulent avaricious king of Corinth, whose task in the world of shades is to roll a huge stone to the top of a hill, and fix it there. It so falls out that the stone no sooner reaches the hill-top than it bounds down again. Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Sisyphus, in Greek mythology, son of Aeolus and Enarete, husband of Merope, and King/Founder of Ephyra (Corinth). According to some (later) sources, he was the father of Odysseus by Anticlea, before she married her later husband, Laertes.He was the father of the sea-god Glaucus by Merope. He was said to have founded the Isthmian games in honour of Melicertes, whose body he found lying on the shore of the Isthmus of Corinth.
He promoted navigation and commerce, but was avaricious and deceitful. He killed travelers and wayfarers. From Homer onwards, Sisyphus was famed as the craftiest of men. When Thanatos came to fetch him, Sisyphus put him into fetters, so that no one died till Ares came, freed Thanatos, and delivered Sisyphus into his custody.
But Sisyphus was not yet at the end of his resources. For before he died he told his wife that when he was gone she was not to offer the usual sacrifice to the dead. So in the underworld he complained that his wife was neglecting her duty, and he persuaded Hades to allow him to go back to the upper world and expostulate with her. But when he got back to Corinth he positively refused to return, until forcibly carried off by Hermes.
In the underworld Sisyphus was compelled to roll a big stone up a steep hill; but before it reached the top of the hill the stone always rolled down, and Sisyphus had to begin all over again (Odyssey, xi. 593). The reason for this punishment is not mentioned in Homer, and is obscure; according to some, he had revealed the designs of the gods to mortals, according to others, he was in the habit of attacking and murdering travellers. The subject was a commonplace of ancient writers, and was depicted by the painter Polygnotus on the walls of the Lesche at Delphi (Pausanias x. 31).
According to the solar theory, Sisyphus is the disk of the sun that rises every day and then sinks below the horizon. Others see in him a personification of the waves rising to a height and then suddenly falling, or of the treacherous sea. It is suggested by Welcker that the legend is symbolic of the vain struggle of man in the pursuit of knowledge. S. Reinach (Revue archéologique, 1904) finds the origin of the story in a picture, in which Sisyphus was represented rolling a huge stone up Acrocorinthus, symbolic of the labour and skill involved in the building of the Sisypheum. When a distinction was made between the souls in the underworld, Sisyphus was supposed to be rolling up the stone perpetually as a punishment for some offence committed on earth, and various reasons were invented to account for it.
This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
Alternative: Sisuphos
See also
- Albert Camus and The Myth of Sisyphus
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Sisyphus."
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Difficulty | Noun: difficulty; hardness; Adjective: impracticability; (impossibility); tough work, hard work, uphill work; hard task, Herculean task, Augean task; task of Sisyphus, Sisyphean labor, tough job, teaser, rasper, dead lift. |
Failure | Verb: fail; be unsuccessful; Adjective: not succeed; make vain efforts;Noun: do in vain, labor in vain, toil in vain; flunk; lose one's labor, take nothing by one's motion; bring to naught, make nothing of; wash a blackamoor white; (impossible); roll the stones of Sisyphus; (useless); do by halves; (not complete); lose ground; (recede); fall short of. |
Inutility | Seek after impossibilities, strive after impossibilities; use vain efforts, labor in vain, roll the stone of Sisyphus, beat the air, lash the waves, battre l'eau avec un baton, donner un coup d'epee dans l'eau, fish in the air, milk the ram, drop a bucket into an empty well, sow the sand; bay the moon; preach to the winds, speak to the winds; whistle jigs to a milestone; kick against the pricks, se battre contre des moulins; lock the stable door when the steed is stolen, lock the barn door after the horse is stolen; (too late);seek after impossibilities, strive after impossibilities; use vain efforts, labor in vain, roll the stone of Sisyphus, beat the air, lash the waves, battre l'eau avec un baton, donner un coup d'epee dans l'eau, fish in the air, milk the ram, drop a bucket into an empty well, sow the sand; bay the moon; preach to the winds, speak to the winds; whistle jigs to a milestone; kick against the pricks, se battre contre des moulins; lock the stable door when the steed is stolen, lock the barn door after the horse is stolen; (too late); hold a farthing candle to the sun; cast pearls before swine; (waste); carry coals to Newcastle; (redundancy); wash a blackamoor white; (impossible). |
Noun: inutility; uselessness; Adjective: inefficacy, futility; inaptitude; unsubservience; inadequacy; (insufficiency); inefficiency.; (incompetence); unskillfulness; disservice; unfruitfulness;(unproductiveness).; labor in vain, labor lost, labor of Sisyphus; lost trouble, lost labor; work of Penelope; sleeveless errand, wild goose chase, mere farce. | |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Sisyphus |
| English words defined with "Sisyphus": Sisyphean. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Sisyphus" is also a word in the following language with the English translation in parentheses. German (sisyphus). |
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Title | Author | Quote |
Les Miserables | Hugo, Victor | Sisyphus had cast in his rock and Job his potsherd |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| "Sisyphus" is generally used as a noun (proper) -- approximately 90.00% of the time. "Sisyphus" is used about 10 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (proper) | 90% | 9 | 117,287 |
| Noun (singular) | 10% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 10 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "Sisyphus": roll the stones of Sisyphus ♦ task of Sisyphus. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "Sisyphus": sisyphus-like. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
sisyphus | 59 |
myth sisyphus | 29 |
sisyphus stone | 8 |
albert camus myth sisyphus | 3 |
picture sisyphus | 3 |
chicago sisyphus stone | 3 |
camus myth sisyphus | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "Sisyphus"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
French | Sisyphe. (various references) | |
German | Sisyphus. (various references) | |
Greek | Σίσυφοσ. (various references) | |
Pig Latin | isyphussay.(various references) | |
Russian | сизиф. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Words rhyming with "Sisyphus" (pronounced 'Sis"y*phus'): Asaphus, scyphus, typhus. (additional references) |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "h-i-p-s-s-s-u-y" | |
-2 letters: physis, sushis. | |
-3 letters: hissy, hussy, pushy, ships, sissy, sushi, syphs. | |
-4 letters: hips, hiss, hyps, phis, pish, piss, psis, push, puss, ship, sips, sups, suss, syph, yips, yups. | |
-5 letters: hip, his, hup, hyp, phi, pis, piu, psi, pus, shy, sip, sis, spy, sup, ups, yip, yup. | |
| Words containing the letters "h-i-p-s-s-s-u-y" | |
+3 letters: suretyships. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Images: Slideshow | 5. Quotations: Fiction 6. Usage Frequency 7. Expressions 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Rhymes 11. Anagrams 12. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
