A.Word.A.Day --priapean

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Oct 30, 2026

This week’s theme
Eponyms from antiquity

This week’s words
epicurean
Herodian
Herodotean
Odyssean
priapean

The Feast of the Gods, 1514
At the far right, Priapus lifts the dress of the sleeping nymph Lotis.

Art: Giovanni Bellini
Titian’s additions in 1529

Another depiction: Priapus weighing his oversized phallus against a bag of coins, Pompeii.

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

priapean

PRONUNCIATION:

(pry-uh-PEE-uhn)

MEANING:

adjective:
1. Phallic.
2. Lewd; salacious.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Priapus, a god of fertility in Greek and Roman mythology. Earliest documented use: 1623.

NOTES:

Priapus was usually depicted with an oversized erect penis, and his statues served as guardians of gardens. They were hard to miss. His name also gives us priapism, a prolonged, often painful erection that occurs without sexual stimulation or persists after it has ended.

USAGE:

“[Baby Doll] describes, with a degree of Priapean detail that might well have embarrassed Boccaccio, how the syndicate’s manager ... gets his revenge.”
New Picture; Time (New York); Dec 24, 1956.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. -John Adams, 2nd US president (30 Oct 1735-1826)

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