Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Same as
xyst . - noun [capitalized] [NL.] A generic name variously applied to certain hymenopterous, coleopterous, and lepidopterous insects.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun in Ancient Greece A long and open
portico within thegymnasium .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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There are other similar instances as in the case of "xystus," "prothyrum," "telamones," and some others of the sort.
The Ten Books on Architecture Vitruvius Pollio
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Next to this "xystus" and to the double colonnade should be laid out the uncovered walks which the Greeks term [Greek: paradromides] and our people "xysta," into which, in fair weather during the winter, the athletes come out from the "xystus" for exercise.
The Ten Books on Architecture Vitruvius Pollio
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"xystus" a stadium, so designed that great numbers of people may have plenty of room to look on at the contests between the athletes.
The Ten Books on Architecture Vitruvius Pollio
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On the south side of these was again a double portico; and on the north, outside the pillars, the _xystus_, or covered porch, where the athletes exercised in winter and in bad weather.
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The viridarium, or xystus, surrounded with spacious porticoes, was once filled with the choicest flowers, and refreshed by the grateful murmur of two fountains.
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From the portico we ascend by three steps to the xystus.
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Passing through the tablinum, we enter the portico of the xystus, or garden, a spot small in extent, but full of ornament and of beauty, though not that sort of beauty which the notion of a garden suggests to us.
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In its general plan it resembled the atrium, being in fact a court, open to the sky in the middle, and surrounded by a colonnade, but it was larger in its dimensions, and the centre court was often decorated with shrubs and flowers and fountains, and was then called _xystus_.
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In front of it is a xystus, fragrant with violets, where the sun's heat is increased by reflection from the cryptoportico, which, at the same time, breaks the northeast wind.
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The _xystus_, or garden, adjoining the house had been laid out like a Grecian landscape with cypresses and laurels between squares of roses and violets.
Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) A Novel Vicente Blasco Ib����ez 1897
tbtabby commented on the word xystus
Noun: An indoor porch for exercising in winter.
October 3, 2008