MUSE • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Muse

Translators

Dictionaries

Courses

Other

Home

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/mjuz/ Listen

noun

Muse n. A gap or hole in a hedge, hence, wall, or the like, through which a wild animal is accustomed to pass; a muset. "Find a hare without a muse."

Muse n.

(Class. Myth.) One of the nine goddesses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who presided over song and the different kinds of poetry, and also the arts and sciences; often used in the plural. At one time certain other goddesses were considered as muses. "Granville commands; your aid, O Muses, bring: What Muse for Granville can refuse to sing?" Note: The names of the Muses and the arts they presided over were: Calliope (Epic poetry), Clio (History), Erato (Lyric poetry), Euterpe (music), Melpomene (Tragedy), Polymnia or Polyhymnia (religious music), Terpsichore (dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astronomy).

A particular power and practice of poetry; the inspirational genius of a poet.

A poet; a bard. (R.)

Muse n.

Contemplation which abstracts the mind from passing scenes; absorbing thought; hence, absence of mind; a brown study.

Wonder, or admiration. (Obs.)

verb

Muse v. t.

To think on; to meditate on. "Come, then, expressive Silence, muse his praise."

To wonder at. (Obs.)

Muse v. i. (past & past part. mused; pres. part. musing)

To think closely; to study in silence; to meditate. "Thereon mused he." "He mused upon some dangerous plot."

To be absent in mind; to be so occupied in study or contemplation as not to observe passing scenes or things present; to be in a brown study.

To wonder. (Obs.)

Synonyms: To consider; meditate; ruminate. See Ponder.

See images of 'Muse'

Etymology of 'Muse'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Muse" Quotes from Famous Books

... Pompadour period. There is more than smoke in M. De Banville's ruling inspiration, his lifelong devotion to letters and to great men of letters—Shakespeare, Moliere, Homer, Victor Hugo. These are his gods; the memory of them is his muse. His enthusiasm is worthy of one who, though born too late to see and know the noble wildness of 1830, yet lives on the recollections, and is strengthened by the example, of that revival of letters. Whatever ...

— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... not, he was not the only devout poet who, in the early times, with sacred reverence believed the wonders the inspiring muse gave him as from God. It is not clear from the Biblical record that Adam was imagined the first man. On the contrary, the statement that Cain was afraid that those who met him would kill him, also that he went ...

— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... feel a little ashamed of my hero, and could wish, for the credit of my tale, it were not more necessary to invoke the historic muse of Fielding, than that of Homer or Tasso; but imperious Truth obliges me to confess, that Tallien, who is to be the subject of this letter, was first introduced to celebrity by circumstances not favourable for the comment of my ...

— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... of him, that is left vnto vs, is like the halfe face of a Venus, the other part of the head beyng hidden, the bodie and the rest of the members vnbegon, yet so excellentlie done by Apelles, as all men may stand still to mase and muse vpon it, and no man step forth with any hope to performe the like. His seuen bookes de bello Gallico, and three de bello Ciuili, be written, so wiselie for the matter, so eloquentlie for the tong, that neither his greatest enemies could euer finde the least note of parcialitie in ...

— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham

... the sea, wears upon its luminous walls small trace of its long history of blood. As we contemplate its mosques and houses flashing their white profiles into the sky, it is impossible not to muse upon the contrast between its radiant and picturesque aspect and its veritable character as the accomplice of every crime and every baseness known to the Oriental mind. To see that sunny city basking between its green hills, you would hardly think of it ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

More quotes...