Meanings
- alternativeuncountableAlternative form of eidolopoeia.
Idolopoeia or ghost-making (as a figure of style) is that which represents a famous person who is really dead and no longer able to speak
1961, “Eupolis”, in John M. Edmonds, editor, The Fragments of Attic Comedy, volume 3, Brill Archive, page 337.1 more example
The plays' capacity to present the political actors on stage as characters actively engaged in interpreting and thus making their way through the very plots that their own actions and interactions were constituting owed a great deal to forensic rhetoric and the training in theopoeia (impersonating historical and mythological characters), prosopoeia (impersonating abstractions or 'things unknown'), and idolopoeia (impersonating dead people)
2016, “The (theatrical) performance of history and politics”, in R. Malcolm Smuts, editor, The Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, Oxford University Press, England, page 210.
Cite this entry
idolopoeia. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/idolopoeia
“idolopoeia.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/idolopoeia. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “idolopoeia,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/idolopoeia.
Source: idolopoeia on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.