cyphonism

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English

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Etymology

Borrowed from New Latin cyphōnismus, from Ancient Greek κυφωνισμός (kuphōnismós), from κύφων (kúphōn, “wooden collar, bent yoke”) + -ισμός (-ismós, abstract noun suffix).

Κυφωνισμός (Kuphōnismós) appears only in the scholia on Aristophanes’ Plutus, where it is simply glossed as the punishment involving the kuphōn, and in the Byzantine Suda, which states that it refers to a “bad and ruinous” punishment. The Suda additionally transmits a fragment of Claudius Aelianus describing a punishment in which one bound to a kuphōn or pillory would be doused in milk and honey and exposed to insects for 20 days. Beginning with the Renaissance humanist Caelius Rhodiginus, “cyphonism” was generally taken to refer to this punishment in particular.

Noun

cyphonism (uncountable)

  1. (rare) An ancient punishment in which the criminal was smeared with honey and exposed to insects.
    • 1842 July 16, “Kyphonism”, in The Illustrated London News, volume 1, number 10, page 158, column 3:
      [In kyphonism] the body of the sufferer was anointed with honey, and so exposed to the sun that the flies and wasps might be tempted to torment him. Suidas gives us the fragment of an ancient law, which punished those who contemned the laws with kyphonism for twenty days; after which they were precipitated from a rock, dressed in woman’s clothes.
    • 1866, J. T. Trowbridge, Lucy Arlyn, page 166:
      Another who got honey was Lucy; but it was the honey of cyphonism,—a little thin sweetening of praise spread over her to attract swarming insects with their bites and stings.
    • 1958 January, C. Howard Ross, “Revolutions in Medicine”, in Washtenaw Impressions‎, volume 13, number 4, page 4:
      Instead, via shame and sham, he was appointed personal physician to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; flitted in and out of court, and with tail dragging never expressed himself in medical controversy again. He thus experienced a spiritual cyphonism.
  2. (rare) An ancient form of punishment involving a sort of wooden pillory by which the victim's neck was bent or weighed downward.

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