Meanings
plural adoxographs
- rhetoricA work of adoxography.
Polycrates, disciple of Gorgias, wrote in praise of mice, pots, pebbles. Others of bees, salt, those are the Adoxographs. Dio Chrysostomos has a praise of mosquitoes, parrots, and hair. Lucian, praise of the fly.
1989, Friedrich [Wilhelm] Nietzsche with Sander L. Gilman, Carole Blair, David J. Parent, editors & translators, Friedrich Nietzsche on Rhetoric and Language, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN1 more example
[A]udiences laugh heartily because the adoxographs, if done with mock seriousness, are a broad form of irony, related to sarcasm. […] In the N-Town Passion Play I, Lucifer is an implied presenter of the play and an implied controller of its events. He addresses the audience directly and confidentially in an extraordinary 124-line adoxograph which is part social satire and part seriocomic plea for our commitment to his suzerainty […] The diabolical adoxographs that have been identified here are collectively an analogue of such cosmic symmetries as those in Dante [Alighieri] […]
2005, John W. Velz, “Adoxography as Mode of Discourse for Satan and His Underlings in Medieval Plays”, in Clifford Davidson, editor, The Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages [AMS Studies in the Middle Ages; 26], New York, N.Y.: AMS Press, →ISBN, pages 98, 102 and 105
Origin
- Ancient Greekἄδοξος“obscure, ignoble”
- New Latinadoxus“absurd, paradoxical”
- Englishadoxograph
From New Latin adoxus (“absurd, paradoxical”) from Ancient Greek ἄδοξος (ádoxos, “obscure, ignoble”) (from ἀ- (a-, “not”) + δόξα (dóxa, “expectation”)) + -graph.
More words from New Latin, Ancient Greek
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
adoxograph. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/adoxograph
“adoxograph.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/adoxograph. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “adoxograph,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/adoxograph.
Source: adoxograph on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.