‖ eidolon
(aɪˈdəʊlən)
Pl. sometimes -a.
[a. Gr. εἴδωλον (see idol, idolum) image, spectre, phantom.]
An unsubstantial image, spectre, phantom.
| 1828 Carlyle Misc. (1857) I. 137 Flying through the air, and living..with mere Eidolons. 1830 Scott Demonol. i. 36 Calling up his eidolon in the hall of his former greatness. a 1849 Poe Dreamland, An Eidolon named Night On a black throne reigns upright. 1850 Mrs. Browning Poems II. 155 How Ulysses left the sunlight For the pale eidola race. 1875 B. Taylor Faust I. xxi. 193 It is a magic shape, a lifeless eidolon. 1876 Lowell Among my Bks. Ser. ii. (1873) 174 No real giant, but a pure eidolon of the mind. |
b. Optics.
| 1881 G. R. Piggott in Nature No. 622. 515 If [the objects are] transparent..strange eidola are generated difficult of interpretation and dispersion. |
Hence eiˈdolic a., of the nature of an eidolon. eiˈdoloclast [f. Gr. κλάστης breaker; cf. iconoclast], one who demolishes idols.
| 1881 G. R. Piggott in Nature No. 622. 515 The earlier..plates..teem with eidolic varieties of form. 1824 De Quincey Goethe Wks. 1863 XII. 191 Let the object of the false worship..be made his own eidoloclast. |