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phoenix

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phoe⋅nix

[fee-niks]
–noun, genitive Phoe⋅ni⋅cis [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.
Also, phenix.


Origin:
bef. 900; < L < Gk phoînix a mythical bird, purple-red color, Phoenician, date palm; r. ME, OE fēnix < ML; L as above

Phoe⋅nix

[fee-niks]
–noun
1. Classical Mythology.
a. the brother of Cadmus and Europa, and eponymous ancestor of the Phoenicians.
b. a son of Amyntor and Cleobule who became the foster father of Achilles and who fought with the Greek forces in the Trojan War.
2. a city in and the capital of Arizona, in the central part. 764,911.
3. Military. a 13-ft. (4 m), 989-lb. (445 kg), U.S. Navy air-to-air missile with radar guidance and a range of over 120 nautical mi.

Ar⋅i⋅zo⋅na

[ar-uh-zoh-nuh]
–noun
a state in SW United States. 2,717,866; 113,909 sq. mi. (295,025 sq. km). Capital: Phoenix. Abbreviation: AZ (for use with zip code), Ariz.

Arizonan, Ar⋅i⋅zo⋅ni⋅an [ar-uh-zoh-nee-uhn] , adjective, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To phoenix
phoe·nix also phe·nix   (fē'nĭks)   
n.  
  1. Mythology A bird in Egyptian mythology that lived in the desert for 500 years and then consumed itself by fire, later to rise renewed from its ashes.

  2. A person or thing of unsurpassed excellence or beauty; a paragon.

  3. Phoenix A constellation in the Southern Hemisphere near Tucana and Sculptor.


[Middle English fenix, from Old English from Old French, both from Medieval Latin fēnix, from Latin phoenix, from Greek phoinix.]
Phoenix  
The capital and largest city of Arizona, in the south-central part of the state northwest of Tucson. Settled c. 1868, it became territorial capital in 1889 and state capital in 1912. The city is noted as a winter and health resort. Population: 1,510,000.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source
Cultural Dictionary

phoenix [(fee-niks)]

A mythical bird that periodically burned itself to death and emerged from the ashes as a new phoenix. According to most stories, the rebirth of the phoenix happened every five hundred years. Only one phoenix lived at a time.

Note: To “rise like a phoenix from the ashes” is to overcome a seemingly insurmountable setback.

Arizona

State in the southwestern United States bordered by Utah to the north, New Mexico to the east, Mexico to the south, and California and Nevada to the west. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix.

Note: The Grand Canyon is in northwestern Arizona.

Phoenix [(fee-niks)]

Capital city of Arizona.

The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source
Word Origin & History

phoenix 
O.E. and O.Fr. fenix, from M.L. phenix, from Gk. phoinix "mythical bird," also "the date" (fruit and tree), also "Phoenician," lit. "purple-red," perhaps a foreign word, or from phoinos "blood-red." Exact relation and order of the senses in Gk. is unclear.
Ðone wudu weardaþ wundrum fæger
fugel feþrum se is fenix hatan

["Phoenix," c.900]
Fig. sense of "that which rises from the ashes of what was destroyed" is attested from 1591.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Computing Dictionary

Phoenix operating system
An operating system, built in BCPL on top of IBM MVT and later MVS by Cambridge University Computing Service from 1973 to 1995, which ran on the university central mainframe. All parts of the system were named after birds, including Eagle (the job scheduler, also the nearest pub), Pigeon (the mailer), GCAL (the text processor) and Wren (the command language), leading to Wren Libraries (a local pun).
Phoenix was much used by chemists in daytime and by the rest of the university in the evenings, and was only abandoned in favour of Unix in 1995; it is one reason Cambridge made little contribution to Unix until then.
Computing Service Phoenix closure memo
(2003-12-05)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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