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levin. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
levin, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
levin in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
levin you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
From Middle English levene. Spellings in Middle English and Early Modern English include leven, levin, levyn, leiven, and leyven.[1] The earlier etymology is less clear. It is thought to be related to Gothic 𐌻𐌰𐌿𐌷𐌼𐌿𐌽𐌹 (lauhmuni) (which see for some more),[2] ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *lewk- (“bright, to shine”). Possibly a regular reflex, possibly North Germanic loan, or possibly from a lost substrate.
Pronunciation
Noun
levin (countable and uncountable, plural levins)
- (archaic, poetic) Lightning; a bolt of lightning; also, a bright flame or light.
1864, George MacDonald, The Old Nurse's Story:His soul was like the night around us now, dark, and sultry, and silent, but lighted up by the red levin of wrath and torn by the bellowings of thunder-passion.
1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto V”, in The Faerie Queene. , London: [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 48, page 475:[N]either blood in face nor life in hart / It left, but both did quite drye vp, and blaſt; / As percing leuin, which the inner part / Of euery thing conſumes, and calcineth by art.
1848, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Preface to the Second London Edition”, in Jane Eyre: An Autobiography. [...] In Two Volumes, copyright edition, volume I, Leipzig: Bernh Tauchnitz Jun., →OCLC, page IX:[...] I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek fire of his sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his denunciation, were to take his warnings in time – they or their seed might escape a fatal Ramoth-Gilead.
1854, Virgil, “The First Georgic”, in W[illiam] Sewell, transl., The Georgics of Virgil, Literally and Rhythmically Translated, , Oxford, Oxfordshire: J. H. Parker, →OCLC, pages 20–21:Never, elsewhen, from heaven when all serene / Fell there more levin-bolts; nor flamed so oft / Comets with curses fraught.
Derived terms
Translations
References
Anagrams
Scots
Numeral
levin
- Obsolete form of eleeven.
References
- “levin, num.”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC, retrieved 7 June 2024, reproduced from William A Craigie, A J Aitken , editors, A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue: , Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1931–2002, →OCLC.