EPICENE • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Epicene

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adjective

Epicene adj., n.

Common to both sexes; a term applied, in grammar, to such nouns as have but one form of gender, either the masculine or feminine, to indicate animals of both sexes; as boys, bos, for the ox and cow; sometimes applied to eunuchs and hermaphrodites.

Fig.: Sexless; neither one thing nor the other. "The literary prigs epicene." "He represented an epicene species, neither churchman nor layman."

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Etymology of 'Epicene'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Epicene" Quotes from Famous Books

... the soft and hesitating and nevertheless already very personal "Pavane pour une Infante defunte," he has maintained himself proudly against his great collateral, just as he has maintained himself against what is false and epicene in the artistic example of Faure. Within their common limits, he has realized himself as essentially as Debussy has done. Their music is the new and double blossoming of the classical French tradition. From the common ground, they stretch out each ...

— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... Preface Whalley's Life of Jonson Every Man out of His Humour Poetaster Fall of Sejanus Volpone Epicene The Alchemist Catiline's Conspiracy Bartholomew Fair The Devil is an Ass The Staple of ...

— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... verse-turning done, and an anonymous volume of sonnets entitled 'Dialogues of the Soul' made a momentary splash on the surface of the literary deep, and then sank like a pebble to the bottom. The book distilled a faint odour of eroticism, a scent of the epicene; but the degenerates, sniffing it, thought poorly of it because of its want of downright rancidity, and the people of whom crowds are made misliked it for a better reason. Paul, with a diminishing exchequer, found himself aware of ...

— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... statement may be made about his feminine counterpart—for all the types of Fairy-land life are of an epicene nature, admitting of a feminine as well as a masculine development—the heroine who in the Skazkas, as well as in other folk-tales, braves the wrath of female demons in quest of means whereby to lighten the ...

— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... the bees With hairy bellies pass between The staminate and pistilate, Blest office of the epicene. ...

— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot

Words linked to "Epicene" : unmanlike, gynandromorph, bisexual person, sissified, epicene person, androgyne, effeminate, unmanful, cissy, unmanly