Briareus

British  

/ braɪˈɛərɪəs /

noun

1. Greek myth a giant with a hundred arms and fifty heads who aided Zeus and the Olympians against the Titans

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Other Word Forms

• Briarean adjective

Example Sentences

So does the sun himself upon a vaster arena and before a greater spectator, like another Briareus; holding out his seventeen planets, and nobody knows how many comets, in his hundred hands.

From Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 by Various

Such was the scene, when midst the loud alarms Sublime the eternal Thunderer rose in arms; When Briareus, by mad ambition driven, Heaved Pelion huge, and hurled it high at heaven.

From The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius with some other poems by Beattie, James

The giant Briareus, with his hundred hands, is truly in China of a most stupendous and colossal stature, being commonly from fifty to sixty feet in height, and sometimes as tall as eighty feet.

From Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey through the Country from Pekin to Canton by Barrow, John, Sir

Some of the apostles were found, upon careful search, to be centipedes; and others to have had as many hands as Briareus.

From Dealings with the Dead, Volume I (of 2) by School, A Sexton of the Old

Briarean, brī-ā′re-an, adj. relating to Briareus, a hundred-handed giant: hence many-handed.

From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 1 of 4: A-D) by Various