Thanks, byb. Yes, it is nice to know that some things are still sacred. I don't mean that Poe is worshipped; I meant that the secret admirer is actively protected from exposure. I was interested, when you said ...which was at the time located on the western edge of the city and is now in the middle of downtown Cities do grow, don't they? There is a part of my city called Old Louisville. In the 1890's, wealthy families built these huge mansions in what was then the suburbs; now it's considered part of downtown.

I had to look up iconoclast, and thought others might be interested in what Atomica has: i·con·o·clast (ī-kŏn'ə-klăst')
n.
One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions.
One who destroys sacred religious images.
[French iconoclaste, from Medieval Greek eikonoklastēs, smasher of religious images : eikono-, icono- + Greek -klastēs, breaker (from Greek klān, klas-, to break).]

i·con'o·clas'tic adj.
i·con'o·clas'ti·cal·ly adv.
WORD HISTORY An iconoclast can be unpleasant company, but at least the modern iconoclast only attacks such things as ideas and institutions. The original iconoclasts destroyed countless works of art. Eikonoklastēs, the ancestor of our word, was first formed in Medieval Greek from the elements eikōn, “image, likeness,” and –klastēs, “breaker,” from klān, “to break.” The images referred to by the word are religious images, which were the subject of controversy among Christians of the Byzantine Empire in the 8th and 9th centuries, when iconoclasm was at its height. In addition to destroying many sculptures and paintings, those opposed to images attempted to have them barred from display and veneration. During the Protestant Reformation images in churches were again felt to be idolatrous and were once more banned and destroyed. It is around this time that iconoclast, the descendant of the Greek word, is first recorded in English (1641), with reference to the Byzantine iconoclasts. In the 19th century iconoclast took on the secular sense that it has today, as in “Kant was the great iconoclast” (James Martineau).


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The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.