Odyssey

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Od·ys·sey

(ŏd′ĭ-sē)

The younger of the two surviving ancient Greek epic poems, traditionally ascribed to Homer but containing much orally transmitted material composed over several centuries, and concerning the adventures and ordeals of the Greek warrior Odysseus after the fall of Troy as he struggles to return home and reestablish himself as king of Ithaca.

od′ys·sey′an (-sē′ən) adj.

od·ys·sey

(ŏd′ĭ-sē)

n. pl. od·ys·seys

1. An extended adventurous voyage or trip.

2. An intellectual or spiritual quest: an odyssey of discovery.

[After the Odyssey.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Odyssey

(ˈɒdɪsɪ)

1. (Poetry) a Greek epic poem, attributed to Homer, describing the ten-year homeward wanderings of Odysseus after the fall of Troy

2. (often not capital) any long eventful journey

Odyssean adj

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Od•ys•sey

(ˈɒd ə si)

n., pl. -seys.

1. (italics) an epic poem attributed to Homer, describing Odysseus's adventures in his ten-year attempt to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

2. (often l.c.) any long journey, esp. when filled with adventure, hardships, etc.

Od`ys•se′an, adj.

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Noun	1.	odyssey - a long wandering and eventful journey journey, journeying - the act of traveling from one place to another
	2.	Odyssey - a Greek epic poem (attributed to Homer) describing the journey of Odysseus after the fall of Troy

odyssey

noun journey, tour, trip, passage, quest, trek, expedition, voyage, crusade, excursion, pilgrimage, jaunt, peregrination The march to Travnik was the final stretch of a three-week odyssey.

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Translations

Irrfahrt Odyssee

Οδύσσεια

peregrinazione

Odyssey

[ˈɒdɪsɪ] N (Myth) → Odisea f
odyssey (fig) → odisea f

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

odyssey

[ˈɒdɪsi] n → odyssée f

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

Odyssey

n (Myth, fig) → Odyssee f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

odyssey

[ˈɒdɪsɪ] n → odissea

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

References in classic literature ?

It argues a certain hardness, or at any rate dislike of the "Iliad" on the part of the writer of the "Odyssey," that she should have adopted Hector's farewell to Andromache here, as elsewhere in the poem, for a scene of such inferior pathos.

The scrupulous regard of Laertes for his wife's feelings is of a piece with the extreme jealousy for the honour of woman, which is manifest throughout the "Odyssey".

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The second period, which produced the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey", needs no description here: but it is very important to observe the effect of these poems on the course of post-Homeric epic.

While, therefore, an epic like the "Odyssey" is an organism and dramatic in structure, a work such as the "Theogony" is a merely artificial collocation of facts, and, at best, a pageant.

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He translated not only the Iliad, but with the help of two lesser poets the Odyssey also.

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I fancy, also, that I must by this time have read the Odyssey, for the "Battle of the Frogs and Mice" was in the second volume, and it took me so much that I paid it the tribute of a bald imitation in a mock-heroic epic of a cat fight, studied from the cat fights in our back yard, with the wonted invocation to the Muse, and the machinery of partisan gods and goddesses.

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His Margites bears the same relation to Comedy that the Iliad and Odyssey do to Tragedy.

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There is neither Iliad nor Odyssey to be found in the libraries of the Chinese; indeed, a favourite feature of their verse is the "stop short", a poem containing only four lines, concerning which another critic has explained that only the words stop, while the sense goes on.

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By degrees, the fate of the unfortunate king interested his auditors so greatly, that the play languished even at the royal table, and the young king, with a pensive look and downcast eye, followed, without appearing to give any attention to it, the smallest details of this Odyssey, very picturesquely related by the Comte de Guiche.

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Pope's 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' afforded the first notably successful instance of another method, that of publication by subscription--individual purchasers at a generous price being secured beforehand by solicitation and in acknowledgment having their names printed in a conspicuous list in the front of the book.

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Mr Bayle (I think, in his article of Helen) imputes this, and with greater probability, to their violent love of glory; for the truth of which, we have the authority of him who of all others saw farthest into human nature, and who introduces the heroine of his Odyssey, the great pattern of matrimonial love and constancy, assigning the glory of her husband as the only source of her affection towards him.[*]

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The truth must have been that, all unversed in the arts of the wily Greek, the deceiver of gods, the lover of strange women, the evoker of bloodthirsty shades, I yet longed for the beginning of my own obscure Odyssey, which, as was proper for a modern, should unroll its wonders and terrors beyond the Pillars of Hercules.