chryselephantine

[prettygoodword]

Theme week! -- a concatenation of long words, in this case all five or six syllables, starting with:


chryselephantine (kris-el-uh-FAN-tin, kris-el-uh-FAN-tayn) - adj., made of or overlaid with gold and ivory.


Both of them together, mind you. We have a word for this because the Ancient Greeks made statues this way. The 12-metre tall statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was chryselephantine, done with an overlay. From Ancient Greek chrȳselephántinos, from chrȳs-, combining form of khrusós, gold + elephántinos, of ivory, from elephās, ivory, from an unidentified Afro-Asiatic language (and yes, elephant means beast bearing ivory).

---L.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

What a lovely word (although the elephants have different opinions).

A gif hypothesizes the statue's construction

https://www.worldhistory.org/image/12091/statue-of-zeus-at-olympia-reconstructed/

[prettygoodword]

Sweet! I wanted to add a pic of either something chryselephantine or that statue, but ran out of time.

[full_metal_ox]

(Also a potential high-falutin’ compliment to a pale-complected blonde.)

And here’s a reproduction (in modern materials) of the lost statue of Athena from the Parthenon (an image you might remember from the opening credits of Saint Seiya):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chryselephantine_sculpture#/media/File:Athena_Parthenos_LeQuire.jpg

[prettygoodword]

... which is supposedly by the same sculptor as the Zeus.

You've got a point about the potential compliment. Hmmm.