sybilline

The theoretical complexities of time travel, which are related to the prophetic tradition in speculative fiction -- as seen in Mary Shelley's "sybilline" frame for The Last Man -- have continued to play a central role in popular science fiction.

Note: Wells 2002

Playing the role of mystery man, he drops sybilline statements the way lesser stylists drop clichés, sows uncertainty for pleasure, and continually reverses himself in mid-field without so much as changing similes.

Mercy 2009

The English version plays significantly worse than the French one, whose sybilline dialogue becomes more concretely, unbearably pretentious when Anglicized.

Archive 2005-12-25 2005

A few of these sybilline leaves, however, were rescued from the flames and conveyed to his mother.

The Life of Oliver Goldsmith 2004

Mostly they had been very sybilline, very vague, though.

She Is The Darkness Cook, Glen 1997

Granny Hong Tray did not stay around to manage the results of her sybilline mutterings.

She Is The Darkness Cook, Glen 1997

In here the tiny office space is the cave of an oracle: steam drifting, sybilline cries arriving out of the darkness ...

Gravity's Rainbow Pynchon, Thomas 1978

The situation awoke old associations of the sybilline and vague predictions of the time-honored soothsayers -- their power -- their greatness -- their fall.

Lady Rosamond's Secret A Romance of Fredericton Rebecca Agatha Armour

Ftatateeta seats herself on the step of the loggia, and sits there, watching the scene with sybilline intensity.

Caesar and Cleopatra George Bernard Shaw 1903

If our account of the Six Days of Creation were a sybilline leaf of unknown origin, it would not be unreasonable to treat its revelations as little worth.

Inspiration and Interpretation: Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford: With Preliminary Remarks: Being an Answer to a Volume Entitled "Essays and Reviews." 1813-1888 1861