L

Leda n

[fr. L, the mother of Castor and Clytemnestra by her husband Tyndareus, and of Pollux and Helen by Zeus, who was wearing the form of a swan] 1 : a satellite of the planet Jupiter 2 : a girl's given name

lethe n
[L, fr. Gk Lethe, a river in Hades whose waters cause drinkers to forget their past, fr. lethe forgetfulness] : oblivion, forgetfulness

lethargy n
[fr. Gk lethargia, fr. lethargos forgetful, fr. lethe] : abnormal drowsiness

lupine adj
[L lupinus, fr. lupus, fr. Gk lykos wolf; assoc. with Lycaeon, who was turned into a wolf] : wolfish

Lupus n
a S constellation near the Milky Way, located between Centaurus and Scorpius

lycanthropy n
[fr. Gk lykanthrop(os) wolf-man, equiv. to lyk(os) wolf + anthropos man, the former of which, according to mythology, is from the name Lycaon, an Arcadian king transformed into a wolf for presuming to test the divinity of Zeus] 1 : a kind of insanity in which the victim imagines himself to be a wolf or other wild beast 2 : the fable's assumption of the form of a wolf by a human being

lyceum n
[L Lyceum, gymnasium near Athens where Aristotle taught, fr. Gk Lykeion, fr. lykeios, epithet of Apollo] 1 : a hall for public lectures or discussions 2 : an association providing public lectures, concerts, and entertainments

lycosid n
[fr. Gk lykos wolf] : a spider of the family Lycosidae, compromising the wolf spiders

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An Etymological Dictionary of Classical Mythology by Elizabeth W. Kraemer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Last updated 1/13/14