pentecosty

English

Etymology

Ancient Greek from a word meaning "fiftieth".

Noun

pentecosty (plural pentecosties or pentecostys)

1. (historical, Ancient Greece) A troop of fifty soldiers in the Spartan army.
   • 1874, Thucydides, translated by Richard Crawley, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 5:

     There were seven companies in the field without counting the Sciritae, who numbered six hundred men: in each company there were four Pentecostyes, and in the Pentecosty four Enomoties.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “pentecosty”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)