SPHINX

Sphinx

A sphinx is a mythical creature with, as a minimum, the body of a lion and a human head.

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sphinx

Noun

  1. A creature with the head of a person and the body of an animal (commonly a lion)
  2. A person who keeps his/her thoughts and intentions secret
  3. A sphincter

Verb

  1. To decorate with sphinxes
    a marble sphinxed chimney-piece
  2. To adopt the posture of the Sphinx.
    A hot lion with a very bloated stomach ... will adopt either a sphinxed or a squatting posture which takes some of the weight off its belly.
    Several animals maintained either a crouched ... or a sphinxing posture (abdomen on the floor)
  3. To be inscrutable, often through silence
    (1900) The sphinxed riddle of the Universe / Nature's unsolved enigma, who may prove?
    (1933) Janet Gaynor, so they tell, is sphinxing it and has gone into a Retirement, with "Nothing to Say — Please Go Away" written on the doormat.
    (1934) The men of science will climb grassy hillsides of 1 island to peer at hundreds of great stone faces that have so far out-sphinxed the sphinx in determined silence about the past.
    (1954) "What are you two sphinxing about?" said Jessica, but her husband said Never mind
    (1964) What with Fisher whole-hogging on one side, and K. of K. sphinxing on the other, Churchill had his work cut out to get any sort of agreement at all.
  4. To make one guess at the unknowable
    (1933) Perhaps Nature is sphinxing us on purpose. Whatever her objects may be, perhaps she gets her work done better when she appeals to our gambling instincts. If you knew for certain exactly how your marriage was going to turn out ...
  5. To befuddle
    (2010) She swiveled and sphinxed Giles. 'And you, I suppose you've never been here either?' Giles squirmed. 'Well, I – that is, Miss Wh—, I mean, Miss Taylor, I –' He looked to me for rescue.
  6. For the feminine to co-opt, dominate, or devour the masculine, especially from a paranoid fear of this happening
    (1986) modernism's fears of being sphinxed by a feminized mass culture


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: sphinx
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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