[fee-niks] 
[fee-nahy-sis, -nee-] for 2. | 1. | (sometimes initial capital letter ) a mythical bird of great beauty fabled to live 500 or 600 years in the Arabian wilderness, to burn itself on a funeral pyre, and to rise from its ashes in the freshness of youth and live through another cycle of years: often an emblem of immortality or of reborn idealism or hope. |
| 2. | (initial capital letter) Astronomy. a southern constellation between Hydrus and Sculptor. |
| 3. | a person or thing of peerless beauty or excellence; paragon. |
| 4. | a person or thing that has become renewed or restored after suffering calamity or apparent annihilation. |
| phe·nix (fē'nĭks) n. Variant of phoenix. |
| phoe·nix also phe·nix (fē'nĭks) n.
[Middle English fenix, from Old English from Old French, both from Medieval Latin fēnix, from Latin phoenix, from Greek phoinix.] |
Ðone wudu weardaþ wundrum fægerFig. sense of "that which rises from the ashes of what was destroyed" is attested from 1591.
fugel feþrum se is fenix hatan
["Phoenix," c.900]