Priapean

comparative more Priapean · superlative most Priapean

1. Greekhuman sciencesOf, relating to, or in honour of Priapus or Priapos (Ancient Greek: Πρίαπος), a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens, and male genitalia.

   In sculpture and in the drama, in Aristophanic farce and in hieratic rituals, in pictorial art and in the stream of literature, the phallus is transcendent. Thus the Priapean poetry of the ancients, particularly of the Romans, hymned sexual potency.

   1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page iii

2. Of, or relating to, an erect penis; phallic.

   Ovid, the amatory poet, describes a professional dancing-girl, whose subtle bodily movements are such an excitant as to provoke, in an ascetic such as the ancient Hippolytus, a priapean condition.

   1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 85

plural Priapeans

1. communicationsA kind of hexameter verse so constructed as to be divisible into two portions of three metrical feet each, generally having a trochee in the first and fourth feet and an amphimacer in the third; applied also to a regular hexameter verse when so constructed as to be divisible into two portions of three feet each.