sphinxity

English

Etymology

From sphinx +‎ -ity.

Noun

sphinxity (plural sphinxities)

1. A profound riddle or conundrum.
   • 1841 December 30, “Musical Intelligence”, in The Musical World, volume 16, number 301, page 424:

     Like the poem of Epysychidion, by Shelley, the entrails of our epilogomena, will be caviare to the many-headed but to the select few will be as water to the parched earth, as manna to the hungry Israelite; they will unravel our sphinxities, and untwist our enigmatics, so that our dictum shall be as the opening of the seventh seal, or the finality of cherubian metastasis.

   • 1909, Sir James Henry Yoxall, The Wander Years, page 233:

     At first we stand agedly solemn before the sphinxity of life, and "on ne devient pas jeune qu'avec le temps."

   • 1989, Dietmar Kamper, Jean Baudrillard, Christoph Wulf, Looking Back on the End of the World, page 90:

     […] the "sphinxity" of humans themselves, the riddle that we carry within us and that we have assigned ourselves to solve.

   • 2015, Patrick McGuinness, Poetry and Radical Politics in fin de siècle France, page 36:

     We always end up understanding it and the intimate satisfaction we gain from guessing at its sphinxities amply repays the laboriousness of our efforts.