phoenix

• phenix (archaic)
• phœnix (obsolete typography)

From Old English and Old French fenix, from Medieval Latin phenix, from Latin phoenīx, from Ancient Greek φοῖνιξ (phoînix), from Egyptian bnw (boinu, “grey heron”). Doublet of Bennu. The grey heron was venerated at Heliopolis and associated in Egypt with the cyclical renewal of life because the bird rises in flight at dawn and migrates back every year in the flood season to inhabit the Nile waters.[1]

• enPR: fē'nĭks, IPA^(key): /ˈfiːnɪks/

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• Rhymes: -iːnɪks

phoenix (plural phoenix or phoenixes or phoenices)

1. (mythology) A mythological bird, said to be the only one of its kind, which lives for 500 years and then dies by burning to ashes on a pyre of its own making, ignited by the sun. It then arises anew from the ashes.
   • 1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 19”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. […], London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, →OCLC:

     burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood

2. (figuratively) Anything that is reborn after apparently being destroyed.

   Astronomers believe planets might form in this dead star's disk, like the mythical Phoenix rising up out of the ashes.

   • 1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter II, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 17:

     Lord Allerton was that modern phœnix, a young man, without a single objection.

   • 1946, George Johnston, Skyscrapers in the Mist, page 90:

     Many of the legitimate nightclubs of today sprang like legalized phoenixes from the still-hot ashes of the speakeasies of prohibition days.

3. (Chinese mythology) A mythological Chinese chimerical bird whose physical body symbolizes the six celestial bodies; a fenghuang.
4. (historical) A Greek silver coin used briefly from 1828 to 1832, divided into 100 lepta.
   • 2019, Roderick Beaton, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation, Penguin, published 2020, page 116:

     The national currency, the phoenix, which had been established by Kapodistrias, was renamed after an ancient Greek coin, the drachma.

5. (obsolete) A marvelous person or thing.
   • 1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter LVIII, in Middlemarch […], volume III, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book VI, page 282:

     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.

phoenix (third-person singular simple present phoenixes, present participle phoenixing, simple past and past participle phoenixed)

1. (Australia) To transfer assets from one company to another to dodge liability
   • 2019 December 17, Noel Gladstone, Carrie Fellner, “Small business flattened by 'dodgy' builders in phoenixing epidemic”, in The Sydney Morning Herald‎:

     Australian Restructuring Insolvency and Turnaround Association CEO John Winter said phoenixing has been "endemic" for decades.

   • 2020 September 24, Anne Davies, “Phoenixing: how unscrupulous dealers rise debt-free from the ashes of failed companies”, in The Sydney Morning Herald‎:

     The ATO defines iIllegal^{[sic – meaning illegal]} phoenixing as when a new company is created to continue the business of a company that has been deliberately liquidated to avoid paying its debts, including taxes, creditors and employee entitlements.

• phoenix (mythology) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• fenghuang on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• phoenix (currency) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• fenix

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈpʰoe̯.niːks/, [ˈpʰoe̯niːks̠]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈfe.niks/, [ˈfɛːniks]

phoenīx f (genitive phoenīcis); third declension

1. phoenix

Third-declension noun (i-stem).

phoenīx m (genitive phoenīcis); third declension

1. Phoenician

Third-declension noun.

phoenīx (genitive phoenīcis); third-declension one-termination adjective (non-i-stem)

1. Phoenician

Third-declension one-termination adjective (non-i-stem).

• (Phoenician): phoenīcius

(Phoenician):

• Phoenīcia
• phoenīcius

(phoenix):

• “phoenix, īcis, m.”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “phoenīx īcis （acc. īca, O.), m”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “phoenix”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers

(Phoenician):

• “Phoenix, īcis”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “Phoenīces, um, m. and sing. Phoenix s.v. Phoenīcē, ēs, f.”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press

Unadapted borrowing from Latin phoenīx.

phoenix m (plural phoenicși)

1. phoenix