hippodame

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English

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Etymology

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By confusion with hippotame.

Noun

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hippodame (plural hippodames)

  1. (obsolete, rare, mythology) A sea horse or hippocampus.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto XI”, in The Faerie Queene. [], London: [] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
      on every syde / They trembling stood, and made a long broad dyke, / That his swift charet might have passage wyde / Which foure great Hippodames did draw in temewise tyde.
    • 1851, William Wilberforce Lord, Christ in Hades:
      Nor did less tumult swell the late defeat Of monstrous Dagon, from whom, worse deformed With hippodame and kraken, self -assumed, So spirits can, turned infantry and steed, Nor chose the ambush of his doubtful shape.