phoenix
Pluralphoenix, phoenixes, phoenices
Pluralphoenix, phoenixes, phoenices
- 1A mythical bird, said to be the only one of its kind, that lives 500 years, burns to ashes on a self-made pyre lit by the sun, and rises anew from the ashes.
As its five hundred years drew to a close, the phoenix built its pyre and waited for the sun to light it.
From the cooling ashes, a young phoenix lifted its wings and flew toward the sunrise.
Note
Poets can make the bird female, as Shakespeare does in Sonnet 19 (1609): “burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood.”
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Shakespeare's Sonnet 19 depicts the phoenix as female and contains the quoted words. shakespeare-navigators.ewu.edu
- Sonnet 19 was first published in 1609. shakespearedocumented.folger.edu
- 2Something that is reborn or rises again after appearing to have been destroyed.
The airline emerged from bankruptcy like a phoenix, smaller but debt-free.
Rebuilt stone by stone after the bombing, the old cathedral is the city's phoenix.
UsageUsually rise like a phoenix from the ashes of something; the plural is phoenixes.
Note
George Johnston (1946) needed the plural, writing that legal nightclubs sprang like phoenixes from the still-hot ashes of the speakeasies.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- George Johnston used phoenixes in describing legitimate nightclubs arising from former speakeasies. en.wiktionary.org
- 3A composite bird of Chinese mythology, the fenghuang, whose body is said to symbolize the six celestial bodies.
Embroidered on the empress's robe, a phoenix faced a coiled dragon across the silk.
Chinese wedding dresses are often embroidered with a dragon and a phoenix.
Note
The fenghuang borrows the English name but not the legend: it has no pyre and no rebirth. English simply reached for the name of the bird reborn from ashes when it met a great mythical bird of China. In Chinese art it keeps its own company, often paired with a dragon, as on an empress's robe.
Less common meanings
- 4A person or thing so remarkable as to seem a marvel.
He may not be a phœnix of cleverness in your sense; his profession is different; but it would be all the better for you to talk a little on his subjects.
1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], MiddlemarchNote
The compliment comes from the legend's insistence that only one such bird exists: a phoenix of a person had no equal. George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871–1872) still uses it, of a man who “may not be a phœnix of cleverness”. A modern reader hears a comeback in the word instead, so this use is best left to period writing.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- The legend describes the phoenix as the only bird of its kind. gutenberg.org
- Applying phoenix to a person draws on the bird's singularity and uniqueness. medievalbestiary.bestiary.ca
- George Eliot wrote Middlemarch. en.wikisource.org
- Middlemarch was first published in 1871–1872. en.wikipedia.org
- The quoted wording occurs in Middlemarch; Rosamond says it about Captain Lydgate. en.wikisource.org
- 5To transfer assets from one company to another so as to escape the first company's liabilities.
- 6A Greek silver coin, divided into 100 lepta, that was in use only briefly, from 1828 to 1832.
The national currency, the phoenix, which had been established by Kapodistrias, was renamed after an ancient Greek coin, the drachma.
2019, Roderick Beaton, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
Ancient Greek φοῖνιξ (phoînix) passed into Latin as phoenīx and Medieval Latin as phenix, and from there into Old English and Old French as fenix. The Greek word possibly comes from Egyptian bnw (boinu, "gray heron"), and if so Bennu is a doublet. In Egypt the gray heron was honored at Heliopolis and tied to the cycle of life's renewal, since it takes flight at dawn and comes back each year in the flood season to live on the waters of the Nile.