Meanings
plural hippodames
- obsoleterarehuman sciencesA sea horse or hippocampus.
on every syde / They trembling stood, and made a long broad dyke, / That his swift charet might have passage wyde / Which foure great Hippodames did draw in temewise tyde.
1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC1 more example
Nor did less tumult swell the late defeat Of monstrous Dagon, from whom, worse deformed With hippodame and kraken, self -assumed, So spirits can, turned infantry and steed, Nor chose the ambush of his doubtful shape.
1851, William Wilberforce Lord, Christ in Hades
Origin
By confusion with hippotame.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
hippodame. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hippodame
“hippodame.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hippodame. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “hippodame,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hippodame.
Source: hippodame on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.