Tiresias

English

Alternative forms

• Teiresias

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek Τειρεσίας (Teiresías).

Proper noun

Tiresias

1. (Greek mythology) A long-lived blind soothsayer who participated over seven generations in the legendary history of (the Greek city) Thebes, noted also for being transformed into a woman for seven years, so being symbolic of androgyny.
   • 1958, Lawrence Durrell, Balthazar‎^[1], page 35:

     […] somewhere a ship's radio was blaring out the latest jazz-hit to reach Alexandria:

     Old Tiresias / No one half so breezy as, / Half so free and easy as / Old Tiresias.

   • 1997, Nicole Loraux, Paula Wissing (translator), The Experiences of Tiresias: The Feminine and the Greek Man, Princeton University Press, →ISBN.
   • 2004, Leonard Shlain, Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution‎^[2], page 255:

     The myth associated with how Tiresias became a hermaphrodite reveals much about relations between the sexes.

Anagrams

• satirise