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lares and penates. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
lares and penates, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
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English
Etymology
A calque of Latin lares et penates. See lar and penates.
Pronunciation
Noun
lares and penates pl (plural only)
- (Roman mythology) The household deities of ancient Rome, respectively overseeing the family and its house and storerooms.
1995, Antony Kamm, The Romans: An Introduction, page 87:The particular gods of the household were its lares and penates.
- (figuratively) One's prized possessions, considered as the protectors or symbols of one's household.
- 1775, Horace Walpole, letter:
- I am returned to my own Lares and Penates—to my dogs and cats.
1949, Anna Wells Rutledge, Artists in the Life of Charleston, page 111:Dissenters came to South Carolina in the decade 1680-1690, some of them persons of means who might have brought with them their lares and penates.
1995, Thomas Mann, translated by John E. Woods, The Magic Mountain, Vintage, published 1996, page 178:“Please understand me now—if it were nothing more than muffled tones and scars on your Aeolus's bellows there, merely some calcified foreign matter, then I would send you packing to rejoin your lares and penates, and not worry one white more about you.”
Synonyms