centauresque

comparative more centauresque · superlative most centauresque

1. Having attributes like those of the mythical centaur.

   More distrustful and irritable than ever, in this section, this watchdog character was to be obsessed with the centauresque likeness of my four boys.

   2011, Gérard Gavarry, Jane Kuntz, Making a Novel, page 60

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   Here they take on their true centauresque form, each one mounting a hired courser and clattering through the town in the direction of the Wood of Verrières.

   1911, "The Centaurs", The Nation: Volume 92, page 212

2. By extension, having the characteristics of two things combined together; hybridized; chimeric.

   Message and method merge, centauresque, to assist him.

   2007, Patricia Kathleen Page, Zailig Pollock, The Filled Pen: Selected Non-fiction, page 68

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   Machiavelli begins chapter 26 by asking if the times are right for a "new prince" in Italy, one "prudente e virtuoso," like Borgia, like the profeta armato, like the hybrid centauresque monster to be composed of Machiavelli's counsel and Medicean power.

   1993, Albert Russell Ascoli, Victoria Ann Kahn, Machiavelli and the Discourse of Literature, page 252

   We are of opinion in any way, that the grace is more obvious than the strength ; and there may be something centauresque and of twofold nature in their rushing mutabilities, and changes on passion and weakness.

   1863, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Greek Christian poets and the English poets, page 160