Dictionary.com Word Of The Day
Mar. 04, 2017
lotus-eater\LOH-tuh s-ee-ter\noun
1. a person who leads a life of dreamy, indolent ease, indifferent to
the busy world; daydreamer.
2. Classical Mythology. a member of a people whom Odysseus found
existing in a state of languorous forgetfulness induced by their eating
of the fruit of the legendary lotus; one of the lotophagi.
QuotesOctavia passed the days in a kind of lotus-eater's dream. Books,
hammocks, correspondence with a few intimate friends, a renewed
interest in her old water-color box and easel--these disposed of the
sultry hours of daylight.
-- O. Henry, "Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches," Whirligigs, 1910
Origin of lotus-eaterIn book 9 of the Odyssey, Odysseus tells the
story of being blown off course for nine days as he was rounding Cape
Malea (the southern tip of the Peloponnesus) westward toward Ithaca,
his home island. On the tenth day Odysseus and his companions landed on
an unnamed island that the Greek historian Herodotus (5th century b.c.)
located on the Libyan coast. The Greek historian Polybius (2nd century
b.c.) specifically identified the island as Meninx (now Djerba) off the
Tunisian coast. The Greek noun lÅtós âlotusâ in ancient times
referred to several different herbs, plants, shrubs, and trees. One of
these, the shrub Ziziphus lotus, is often thought to be the lotus of
the Odyssey. Lotus-eaterentered English in the 17th century.More From
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