Ichabod

English

Etymology

From Biblical Hebrew אִיכָבוֹד (ʾīḵāḇōḏ, literally “no honor”), from אִי (ʾī, “not”) + כָּבוֹד (kāḇōḏ, “honor”); alluding to 1 Samuel 4:21, where Eli’s daughter-in-law names her child Ichabod, saying ‘The glory is departed from Israel.’

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɪkəbɒd/

Proper noun

Ichabod

1. (archaic) A male given name

Translations

given name

• French: I-Kabod m
• German: Ikabod
• Italian: Icabod m
• Portuguese: Icabô m, Icabode m
• Spanish: Ichâbod m
• Swedish: I-Kavod

Interjection

Ichabod

1. Expressing regret at a loss of former glory or high standards.
   • 1819, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe:

     ”Better the tomb of her fathers than the dishonourable couch of the licentious and savage Templar. Ichabod! Ichabod! the glory hath departed from my house!”

   • 1850, Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets: The present time:

     Ichabod; is the glory departing from us? Under the sun is nothing baser, by all accounts and evidences, than the system of repression and corruption, of shameless dishonesty and unbelief in anything but human baseness, that we now live under.

   • 1946, Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, →OCLC:

     Except for the library, the eastern wing, from the Tower of Flints onwards, was now but a procession of forgotten and desolate relics, an Ichabod of masonry that filed silently along an avenue of dreary pine whose needles hid the sky.

   • 1952, P. G. Wodehouse, Pigs Have Wings:

     Ichabod, felt Lord Emsworth, and was still in a disturbed state of mind, though gradually becoming soothed by listening to that sweetest of all music, the sound of the Empress restoring her tissues.