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cyphonism

Not valid in Scrabble

It's a recognised English word, but it isn't in the official NASPA Scrabble word list.

Scrabble points
21
Words With Friends
23
Letters
9

Definition of cyphonism

2 senses · 1 part of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. (rare, uncountable)An ancient punishment in which the criminal was smeared with honey and exposed to insects.
    “[In kyphonism] the body of the sufferer was anointed with honey, and so exposed to the sun that the flies and wasps might be tempted to torment him. Suidas gives us the fragment of an ancient law, which punished those who contemned the laws with kyphonism for twenty days; after which they were precipitated from a rock, dressed in woman’s clothes.”
    “Another who got honey was Lucy; but it was the honey of cyphonism,—a little thin sweetening of praise spread over her to attract swarming insects with their bites and stings.”
    “Instead, via shame and sham, he was appointed personal physician to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; flitted in and out of court, and with tail dragging never expressed himself in medical controversy again. He thus experienced a spiritual cyphonism.”
See all 2 definitions

noun

  1. (rare, uncountable)An ancient punishment in which the criminal was smeared with honey and exposed to insects.
    “[In kyphonism] the body of the sufferer was anointed with honey, and so exposed to the sun that the flies and wasps might be tempted to torment him. Suidas gives us the fragment of an ancient law, which punished those who contemned the laws with kyphonism for twenty days; after which they were precipitated from a rock, dressed in woman’s clothes.”
    “Another who got honey was Lucy; but it was the honey of cyphonism,—a little thin sweetening of praise spread over her to attract swarming insects with their bites and stings.”
    “Instead, via shame and sham, he was appointed personal physician to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; flitted in and out of court, and with tail dragging never expressed himself in medical controversy again. He thus experienced a spiritual cyphonism.”
  2. (rare, uncountable)An ancient form of punishment involving a sort of wooden pillory by which the victim's neck was bent or weighed downward.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

Borrowed from New Latin cȳphōnismus, from Ancient Greek κῡφωνισμός (kūphōnismós), from κῡ́φων (kū́phōn, “wooden collar, bent yoke”) + -ισμός (-ismós, abstract noun suffix). Κῡφωνισμός (Kūphōnismós) appears only in the scholia…

See full etymology

Borrowed from New Latin cȳphōnismus, from Ancient Greek κῡφωνισμός (kūphōnismós), from κῡ́φων (kū́phōn, “wooden collar, bent yoke”) + -ισμός (-ismós, abstract noun suffix). Κῡφωνισμός (Kūphōnismós) appears only in the scholia on Aristophanes’ Plutus, where it is simply glossed as the punishment involving the kūphōn, and in the Byzantine Suda, which states that it refers to a “bad and ruinous” punishment. The Suda additionally transmits a fragment of Claudius Aelianus describing a punishment in which one bound to a kūphōn or pillory would be doused in milk and honey and exposed to insects for 20 days. Beginning with the Renaissance humanist Caelius Rhodiginus, “cyphonism” was generally taken to refer to this punishment in particular.

Anagrams of cyphonism

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Words you can make from cyphonism

200+ playable · top: SYMPHONIC (21 pts)

Best play symphonic 21 points

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