mythic

English

Etymology

1660s; from Latin mȳthicos or Ancient Greek μυθικός (muthikós); equivalent to myth +‎ -ic.

Pronunciation

• enPR: mĭth'ĭk, IPA^(key): /ˈmɪθɪk/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪθɪk

Adjective

mythic (comparative more mythic, superlative most mythic)

1. Mythical; existing in myth.
   • 1998, Chloé Diepenbrock, Gynecology and textuality: popular representations, page 88:

     Whitehead-Gould has become a mythic presence in the case history fairy-tale: the personification of the selfish woman who went back on her promise to deliver up her child to an unfulfilled aspiring mother.

   • 2005, Gerhard Hoffmann, From modernism to postmodernism: concepts and strategies, page 294:

     Bellerophon attempts to become a mythic hero by perfectly imitating the actuarial program for mythic heroes.

   • 2008, Peter Schmidt, Sitting in darkness: New South fiction, education, and the rise of Jim Crow, page 156:

     The Wyoming territories become a mythic space where character is tested and revealed and Good battles Evil.

   • 2008, Laurence Jay Silberstein, Postzionism: a reader, page 351:

     The ways in which Eastern Europe has become a mythic part of the Jewish past and not an imagined mythic home in the future is central to understanding how American Jews see themselves at home in America.

   • 2010, Networks of Design: Proceedings of the 2008 Annual International Conference of the Design History Society, page 161:

     By the mid-nineteenth century tartan had become a mythic material encompassing ideas of nationhood, clanship, and political allegiance seen through increasingly fashionable and spectacular forms.

2. Very rare.
3. (colloquial) Amazing, epic, legendary.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:awesome

   • 2007, James Daniel Hardy, Baseball and the mythic moment: how we remember the national game, page 63:

     Had Pesky nailed Enos Slaughter in the 1946 Series, his throw home would have become a mythic moment.

   • 2023 September 6, Luke Winkie, “Our Greatest Fast-Food Joint Is Costco”, in Slate‎^[2], archived from the original on 6 September 2023:

     There's far more than just hot dogs to feast on too. The pizzas—gigantic, floppy, with a hyperreal waxy sheen—are mythic. They arrive exclusively in cheese, pepperoni, or supreme—the holy trinity—and will run you an eminently affordable $1.99 for a ridiculously huge wedge-shaped slice.

Derived terms

• mythicism
• mythicist

Anagrams

• thymic