lares and penates
Pronunciation Noun
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Pronunciation Noun
- (Roman mythology) The household deities of ancient Rome, respectively overseeing the family and its house and storerooms.
- 1995;, Antony Kamm, The Romans: An Introduction, p. 87:
- The particular gods of the household were its lares and penates.
- 1995;, Antony Kamm, The Romans: An Introduction, p. 87:
- (figuratively) One's prized possessions, considered as the protectors or symbols of one's household.
- 1775, Horace Walpole, letter:
- I am returned to my own Lares and Penates—to my dogs and cats.
- 1949, Anna Wells Rutledge, Artists in the Life of Charleston, p. 111:
- Dissenters came to South Carolina in the decade 1680-1690, some of them persons of means who might have brought with them their lares and penates.
- 1995, John E. Woods, translating Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, Vintage 1996, p. 178:
- “Please understand me now—if it were nothing more than muffled tones and scars on your Aeolus's bellows there, merely some calcified foreign matter, then I would send you packing to rejoin your lares and penates, and not worry one white more about you.”
- 1775, Horace Walpole, letter:
- (household deities) See household deity
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003