thyrsus

English edit

thyrsus (plural thyrsi)

A staff topped with a conical ornament, carried by Bacchus or his followers.
- 1882, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Poet's Calendar
  In my hand I bear / The thyrsus, tipped with fragrant cones of pine.
- 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Second Book”, in Aurora Leigh, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1857, →OCLC:
  As good to grow on graves / As twist about a thyrsus.
- 1968, Anthony Burgess, Enderby Outside:
  The champagne was done, and she upturned the bottle to hold it like a thyrsus.
(botany) A species of inflorescence; a dense panicle, as in the lilac and horse-chestnut.

staff

Borrowed from Ancient Greek θύρσος (thúrsos, “plant-stalk, Bacchic staff”).

thyrsus m (genitive thyrsī); second declension

“thyrsus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
“thyrsus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
thyrsus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
thyrsus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
“thyrsus”, in The Perseus Project (1999) Perseus Encyclopedia‎^[1]
“thyrsus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
“thyrsus”, in William Smith, editor (1848), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, London: John Murray
“thyrsus”, in William Smith, editor (1854, 1857), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, volume 1 & 2, London: Walton and Maberly
“thyrsus”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin