lotus-eater

plural lotus-eaters · alternative lotus eater · alternative lotos-eater · alternative lotos eater

1. Greekhuman sciencesA member of the legendary people living on an island dominated by the lotus tree, who have forgotten their homes due to the fruits' narcotic and stupefying effect.

   Men of Ithaca, this is meeter, / In the hollow rosy vale to tarry, / Like a dreamy Lotos-eater, a delirious Lotos-eater!

   1832 December (indicated as 1833), Alfred Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters”, in Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 116

   Synonyms: Lotophagi

2. figurativelySomeone with a carefree, idyllic life.

   "You're a lucky man, Jim," he kept saying. "You've been ordered to become a lotus-eater."

   1974, John le Carré, chapter 32, in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

   3 more examples

   Our readers will, we think, agree that this is admirably character­istic, and that the singers of this song must have made pretty free with the intoxicating fruit. How they got home you must read in Homer:—Mr. Tennyson—himself, we presume, a dreamy lotus-eater, a delicious lotus-eater—leaves them in full song.

   1833 April/July, John Wilson Croker, “Poems by Alfred Tennyson”, in Quarterly Review, volume 49, page 92

   I remember being ill once in a foreign hotel myself and how much I enjoyed it. To lie there careless of everything, quiet and warm, and with no weight upon the mind, to hear the clinking of the plates in the far-off kitchen as the scullion rinsed them and put them by; to watch the soft shadows come and go upon the ceiling as the sun came out or went behind a cloud; to listen to the pleasant murmuring of the fountain in the court below, and the shaking of the bells on the horses’ collars and the clink of their hoofs upon the ground as the flies plagued them; not only to be a lotus-eater but to know that it was one’s duty to be a lotus-eater.

   1873–1884 (date written), Samuel Butler, chapter LXXX, in R[ichard] A[lexander] Streatfeild, editor, The Way of All Flesh, London: Grant Richards, published 1903, →OCLC, page 367

   What! not begun yet? Oh! you degenerate lotus-eater. And here have I been a horny-handed son of toil all the morning, and now I'm as hungry as a hound, and I knew you'd never remember to bring me a turnover or anything, and so I thought I'd come up and get it myself.

   1889, Laura D. Nichols, Lotus Bay: A Summer on Cape Cod, page 31