EFFIGY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does effigy mean? 

• EFFIGY (noun)
  The noun EFFIGY has 1 sense:

1. a representation of a person (especially in the form of sculpture)

  Familiarity information: EFFIGY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EFFIGY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A representation of a person (especially in the form of sculpture)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

effigy; image; simulacrum

Context example:

the emperor's tomb had his image carved in stone

Hypernyms ("effigy" is a kind of...):

representation (a creation that is a visual or tangible rendering of someone or something)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "effigy"):

Guy (an effigy of Guy Fawkes that is burned on a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day)

god; graven image; idol (a material effigy that is worshipped)

bird-scarer; scarecrow; scarer; straw man; strawman (an effigy in the shape of a man to frighten birds away from seeds)

wax figure; waxwork (an effigy (usually of a famous person) made of wax)

 Context examples 

He had thrown off the seedy frockcoat, and now he was the Holmes of old in the mouse-coloured dressing-gown which he took from his effigy.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"You look like the effigy of a young knight asleep on his tomb," she said, carefully tracing the well-cut profile defined against the dark stone.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

His idea was still with me, because it was not a vapour sunshine could disperse, nor a sand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was a name graven on a tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it inscribed.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Shadowy effigies in armor stood on either side, a dead silence reigned, the lamp burned blue, and the ghostly figure ever and anon turned its face toward him, showing the glitter of awful eyes through its white veil.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I liked the hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by no means coveted a night's repose on one of those wide and heavy beds: shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought old English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings,—all which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)