saturnic

adj

1. containing lead or suffering from lead poisoning (saturnia)

   “As regards alcohol, eight of the men, including one subject of gout and one of lead-poisoning, confined their potations to two pints of beer or less daily. Of one more, a painter, gouty and saturnic, the amount was not ascertained.”

   “Similarly, further studies are necessary in order to find out the exact share of responsibility of nautical activities in saturnic pollution, and the precise sources of nickel and cadmium.”

2. saturnine; tending to a gloomy, melancholy, or bitter disposition

   “Don Fernan presented that union of fiery passion and saturnic manners not unusual among Spaniards.”

   “They made an odd-looking pair. Thomas short, round and tubby with the look of a naughty cherub, Campbell tall, saturnic and inclined to look gloomy under his wide fawn sombrero.”

   “Taking into account the metaphor »scythe of Saturn« that refers to the god as well as the planet of melancholy that the title of Sebald’s book recalls from the beginning, one might consider the vision of the globe as a graveyard as part of a baroque topos of vanitas and transitoriness—in the sense that Walter Benjamin pointed to the significance of saturnic melancholy within the ruinous world of seventeenth-century German tragedies.”

3. of or relating to the planet Saturn

   “Under these conditions the Moon could only collide with satellites in orbits external to the Moon itself since it is well-known that any sizable satellite inside the Roche limit would rapidly disintegrate into some kind of saturnic ring.”

   “They sit on saturnic moons, they sway far out in the interstellar spaces.”

4. Saturnalian: riotously merry; dissolute

   “A remarkable example of such saturnic mime is provided by Plato’s Symposium. Its beginning is saturnalia, its ending—komos; its whole setting is not everyday-realistic but saturnic, Bacchic, and the roots of “feast” philosophy (wine and the theme of eros) lie in Bacchism-saturnism.”