labyrinth

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A maze-like structure built by Daedalus in Knossos, containing the Minotaur.

   Mrs. Churchill liked the interminable labyrinths of the Cyrus and the Cassandra, because she had liked them in the days of her girlhood. Youth identifies itself with the romance; it is the heroic knight, or the lovely lady, of which it reads; it lives amid those fine creations; its sweetest hours are given to dreams which soon "Fade into the light of common day.".

2. 2
   verb

   To arrange in the form of a labyrinth.

   It is said to have been labyrinthed by secret exits and cunning contrivances to facilitate the escape of fugitives from the law.

3. 3
   verb

   To twist and wind, following a labyrinthine path.

   We labyrinthed through it, meeting scores of panty-clad and moccasined Indians and barefoot women and girls toiling marketward under atrocious burdens; for the day was Sunday.

4. 4
   verb

   To become lost and confused, as if in a labyrinth.

   They arrive at their different destinations long before day, and make their attack about day-break, and seldom fail to kill or make prisoners of the whole family, as the people know nothing of the matter until they are thus labyrinthed.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Labyrinth comes from Greek laburinthos and entered English in the late Middle Ages as the name of the mythological maze built by Daedalus for King Minos to contain the Minotaur. By the early seventeenth century it also denoted garden mazes and, figuratively, anything intricately complicated.

From Middle English laberynt, laberynthe, from Latin labyrinthus, from Ancient Greek λᾰβύρῐνθος (lăbúrĭnthos, “a maze”).

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary