mycenae
/maɪˈsiːniː/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.14 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
name
An ancient Greek city in the NE Peloponnesus on the plain of Argos, inhabited since about 4000 B.C.E.
Example Sentences
- "1958, Alan John Bayard Wace, Elizabeth Bayard French, The Mycenae Tablets II, American Philosophical Society, page 1, The excavators of Mycenae added in 1953 and 1954 important new materials to the small but excellent archives of Mycenae."
- "1992 [Routledge], Richard Tomlinson, From Mycenae to Constantinople, 2003, Taylor & Francis e-Library, page 31, In 479 BC the citizen army of Mycenae marched to Plataea in Boeotia to join the other mainland Greek cities in inflicting the final defeat which terminated Xerxes' invasion of Greece."
- "The Prehistoric Cemetery at Mycenae provides our most coherent glimpse of the Middle Hellenic period at Mycenae."
Etymology
From Latin Mycenae, Ancient Greek Μυκῆναι (Mukênai), the name of the Ancient Greek city, from Μυκήνη (Mukḗnē), a nymph in Greek mythology who lived around Mycenae. Doublet of Mykines. Two traditional etymologies exist: * According to Pausanias, Perseus, the legendary founder of the city, named it either after the cap of the sheath of his sword or after a mushroom he had plucked on the site (either way, the term would derive from Ancient Greek μύκης (múkēs)). * Homer connected the name to the abovementioned Mycene (or Mykene), daughter of Inachus, first King of Argos (Odyssey, 2.120). Homer was not alone in identifying Inachus as a river god, and thus Mycene as a nymph.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: Mycenae, Μυκῆναι
Inflected Forms
Mycenæ (alternative)