Fun Words
Ran across a neat word today that I don't want to forget:
eidolon
From Dictionary.com:
ei·do·lon
n. pl. ei·do·lons or ei·do·la (-l)
A phantom; an apparition.
An image of an ideal.
and the first entry from the Oxford English Dictionary:
An unsubstantial image, spectre, phantom.
1828 CARLYLE Misc. (1857) I. 137 Flying through the air, and living..with mere Eidolons. 1830 SCOTT Demonol. i. 36 Calling up his eidolon in the hall of his former greatness. a1849 POE Dreamland, An Eidolon named Night On a black throne reigns upright. 1850 MRS. BROWNING Poems II. 155 How Ulysses left the sunlight For the pale eidola race. 1875 B. TAYLOR Faust I. xxi. 193 It is a magic shape, a lifeless eidolon. 1876 LOWELL Among my Bks. Ser. II. (1873) 174 No real giant, but a pure eidolon of the mind.