Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. The reconstructed form *montwa, the ancestor of Greek Mousa, also comes from this root and probably originally referred to "mental power" that enables poets to craft verses-the Muses were the Greek poets' divinized conceptions of the faculties that help them to create and recite poetry. who begins both The Iliad and The Odyssey with an invocation of his Muse. think, ruminate on, dream, ponder, contemplate: I mused on his offer for a long time. Usually it is placed at the beginning of the poem, but may also appear in later positions, such as at the start of a new canto. Greek mnēmosunē is derived from the root *mnā-, an extended form of the Greek and Indo-European root *men-, "to think." This is the root from which English also gets the words amnesia (from Greek), mental (from Latin), and mind (from Germanic). muses synonyms, muses pronunciation, muses translation, English dictionary definition of muses. The invocation of a muse was a convention in ancient Greek and Latin poetry, especially in the epic it was followed later by many poets of the Renaissance and neoclassical periods. Her name is simply the Greek noun mnēmosunē, "memory"-the faculty of memory was indeed the mother of invention for the ancient Greek professional poets and bards whose job it was to compose new poems in traditional styles on festive occasions, to recite the verses of Homer, and to improvise material whenever they had a memory lapse. As to the further origins of this form, a clue is provided by the name of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory and mother of the Muses. The ancient Greeks believed that their loved ones would be able to enjoy the muses talents in the Afterlife through this association. Muse, in Greco-Roman religion and mythology, any of a group of sister goddesses of obscure but ancient origin, the chief centre of whose cult was Mount Helicon in Boeotia, Greece. In Greek dialects, this word is found in the variant forms mōsa and moisa, and together these indicate that the Greek word comes from an original *montwa. What does Muse mean Proper usage and audio pronunciation (plus. Copyright 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Rare a poet Webster’s New World College Dictionary, 4th Edition. The word Muse comes from Latin Mūsa, which in turn is from Greek Mousa. m- the spirit that is thought to inspire a poet or other artist source of genius or inspiration b. Information and translations of muse in the most comprehensive dictionary definitions resource on the web. Word History: Ever since Chaucer first mentions the Muses in a work from around 1390, English poets have invoked these goddesses like so many other versifiers since the days of Homer, who begins both The Iliad and The Odyssey with an invocation of his Muse.
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