Aeolic

or E·ol·ic

[ ee-ol-ik ]

noun

1. Also . the Greek dialect of ancient Aeolis and Thessaly.

adjective

1. Architecture. noting or pertaining to a capital used in the Greek territories of the eastern Aegean in the 7th and 6th centuries b.c., having two volutes rising from a shaft in opposite directions, and often having below them two convex rings of leaf ornament in the form of water-lily buds.
2. Aeolian ²( def ).

Aeolic

/ iːˈəʊlɪk; iːˈɒlɪk /

adjective

1. of or relating to the Aeolians or their dialect

noun

1. one of four chief dialects of Ancient Greek, spoken chiefly in Thessaly, Boeotia, and Aeolis

Word History and Origins

Origin of Aeolic¹

First recorded in 1730–40; from Latin Aeolicus, from Greek Aiolikós, equivalent to Aioleús (plural Aioleîs ) + -ikos adjective, noun suffix; -ic

Example Sentences

Market forces were also at work: as the centuries passed, fewer readers—and fewer scribes—understood Aeolic, the dialect in which Sappho composed, and so demand for new copies diminished.

From The New Yorker

It has been thought indeed that the Homeric dialect was a mixed one, mainly Ionic, but containing Aeolic and even Doric forms; this, however, is a mistaken view of the processes of language.

From Project Gutenberg

These legends lived in the The “Iliad” and the “Odyssey.” ballads of the Aeolic minstrels, and from them passed southward into Ionia, where the Ionian poets gradually shaped them into higher artistic forms.

From Project Gutenberg

Doric had an accentuation system different both from Aeolic and from Ionic-Attic, but the details of the system are very imperfectly known.

From Project Gutenberg

The elegy, in its calm movement, seems to have begun to lose currency when the ecstasy of emotion was more successfully interpreted by the various rhythmic and dithyrambic inventions of the Aeolic lyrists.

From Project Gutenberg