EPITHET

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does epithet mean? 

• EPITHET (noun)
  The noun EPITHET has 2 senses:

1. a defamatory or abusive word or phrase

2. descriptive word or phrase

  Familiarity information: EPITHET used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EPITHET (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A defamatory or abusive word or phrase

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

epithet; name

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

calumniation; calumny; defamation; hatchet job; obloquy; traducement (a false accusation of an offense or a malicious misrepresentation of someone's words or actions)

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

smear word (an epithet that can be used to smear someone's reputation)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Descriptive word or phrase

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

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

characterisation; characterization; delineation; depiction; picture; word-painting; word picture (a graphic or vivid verbal description)

 Context examples 

Elizabeth could hardly help laughing at so convenient a proposal; yet was really vexed that her mother should be always giving him such an epithet.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Soft is the very word for her eye—of all epithets, the justest that could be given.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

The child still struggled and loaded me with epithets which carried despair to my heart; I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead at my feet.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

"Bourgeois," "trader's den"—Brissenden's epithets repeated themselves in his mind.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Thus they denote the folly of a servant, an omission of a child, a stone that cuts their feet, a continuance of foul or unseasonable weather, and the like, by adding to each the epithet of Yahoo.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Who could doubt it who has heard of the Agamemnon? cried Lady Hamilton, and straightway she began to talk of the admiral and of his doings with such extravagance of praise and such a shower of compliments and of epithets, that my father and I did not know which way to look, feeling shame and sorrow for a man who was compelled to listen to such things said in his own presence.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You missed your epithet.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I am surprised, Steerforth—although your candour does you honour, said Mr. Creakle, does you honour, certainly—I am surprised, Steerforth, I must say, that you should attach such an epithet to any person employed and paid in Salem House, sir.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adele: pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with coldness and acrimony.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)