anerithmon gelasma

English edit

Etymology edit

Ancient Greek ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα (anḗrithmon gélasma), from Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound (90).[1]

Noun edit

anerithmon gelasma (uncountable)

  1. (poetic) Uncountable laughter, said of ocean waves sparkling in sunlight.
    • 1848, James Russell Lowell, Poems:
      With a stomach half full and a cerebrum hollow
      As the tortoise-shell ere it was strung for Apollo,
      Under contract to raise anerithmon gelasma
      With rhymes so hard hunted they gasp with the asthma,
    • 1855, William Makepeace Thackeray, Quarterly Review:
      ...give us the placid grinning kings, twanging their jolly bows over the rident horses, wounding those good-humored enemies, who tumble gayly off the towers, or drown, smiling, in the dimpling waters, amidst the anerithmon gelasma of the fish.
    • 1859, Richard F. Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Africa, →ISBN:
      On one side lies the Indian Ocean, illimitable towrds the east, dimpled with its "anerithmon gelasama," and broken westward by a thin line of foam, creaming upon the whitest and finest of sand, the detritus of coralline and madrepore.

References edit

  1. ^ Cornelius Castoriadis, Figures of the Thinkable, Stanford University Press, 2007, p. 24, →ISBN.