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Word of the Day Archive
Thursday October 26, 2000
Promethean \pruh-MEE-thee-un\, adjective:
1. Of or pertaining to Prometheus.
2. Boldly original or creative.
Three years later, he became the first American playwright to achieve the Nobel Prize for Literature and was embraced as Broadway's Promethean emblem.
-- Arthur Gelb and Barbara Gelb, O'Neill: Life With Monte Cristo
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Promethean self-confidence of the new sciences had seemed likely to sweep everything before it.
-- Patrick Allitt, Catholic Converts
Prometheus, "forethought" in Greek, was the Titan of Greek mythology who stole fire from Olympus and gave it to mankind. For this, Zeus chained him to a rock where a vulture preyed upon his liver until Hercules saved him. The name comes from promethes, "forethoughtful," from pro, "forward" + an element perhaps derived from menos, "mind."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for Promethean
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