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Adonis

Mythology
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Youth of extraordinary beauty in Greek myth, beloved by Aphrodite, whose death by boar led to the creation of the anemone flower.

Detailed Definition
Adonis was a mortal of extraordinary beauty, beloved by Aphrodite, whose death (often by wild boar) led to the creation of the anemone flower. His myth represents cyclical death and rebirth, particularly in vegetation. Poets invoke Adonis to explore fleeting beauty, erotic love, and the sorrow of premature death.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Shakespeare’s "Venus and Adonis," Adonis rejects Venus’s advances, symbolizing chastity and youthful resistance to love; In Ovid’s "Metamorphoses," Adonis’s death and rebirth reflect seasonal cycles and the fragility of beauty; In John Keats’s “Endymion,” Adonis is invoked as a parallel to other doomed lovers; In Algernon Charles Swinburne’s “Adonis,” the poem mourns the loss of idealized male beauty; In Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Sonnets to Orpheus,” Adonis represents ephemeral artistic inspiration; In modern poetry like Louise Glück’s “The Triumph of Achilles,” Adonis signifies the intersection of desire and mortality.
Additional Notes
Adonis, derived from Near Eastern fertility myths and adapted into Greek mythology, is a beautiful youth loved by Aphrodite and killed by a boar; he symbolizes ephemeral beauty, cyclical death and rebirth, and the transience of youth—Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis explores erotic desire and mortality, while Romantic and later poets use Adonis as an emblem of aesthetic idealism cut short.
Also Known As
Fair Youth Lover of Aphrodite Bloom of Beauty
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