chrysalis
/ˈkɹɪsəlɪs/
Frequency: 2.60 in modern English
Meaning
noun
A butterfly pupa or the pupal stage of the butterfly lifestyle; (originally) any pupal stage of any insect wherein the pupa is largely inactive and takes no food.
noun
Any limiting environment or situation escaped during one's growth or development in the manner of a butterfly.
name
A hypothetical former moon of Saturn, whose gravitational influence is proposed as the source of Saturn's inclination and near-resonance with Uranus, and whose destruction by gravitational disruption is proposed as the source of Saturn's rings.
name
A proposed generation ship, which would use fusion rockets and take 400 years to travel from the Sun to Alpha Centauri. See PROJECT HYPERION and Project Hyperion (interstellar).
Example Sentences
- "Amongst the particular signs testifying the same thing, are also those exhibited by worms which feed on herbs, which, when they are to undergo a metamorphosis, encompass themselves as with a womb, that they may be born again, being therein changed into nymphs and chrysalisses, and presently into beautiful butterflies, when they fly into the air as into their heaven, where the female sports with her male companion, as one conjugal partner with another, and they nourish themselves from odoriferous flowers, and lay their eggs, thus providing that their species may live after them: […]"
- "The herbaceous or herbiferous produce had such gummy gelatinous properties, that tiniest tiddles incorporated themselves into huge chrysalisses, from whence monster butterflies egged it, all the world over, like snowberries, during a moist September, as soon as the blossom is by!"
- "Caterpillars, chrysalisses soon reveal / The future gandy butterfly."
- "Fanny was afraid. She was like an insect new-hatched from its chrysalis, naked and unprotected in a dawn she could not face."
- "A project on butterflies! And caterpillars and chrysalisses and things, and lots of nice drawings, coloured with felt pens."
- "However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame. At the same time he cast off the chrysalis of a commonplace existence."
Etymology
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: chrysalis, χρυσαλλίς, -