Meaning of Chrysalis | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The pupa of a butterfly or moth, particularly bare and hanging or girdled, as opposed to enclosed in a cocoon, in which metamorphosis takes place.
2. A former moon in Saturn, Solar System. A hypothetical former moon of Saturn, whose gravitational influence is proposed as the source of Saturn's inclination and near-resonance with Uranus, and whose destruction by gravitational disruption is proposed as the source of Saturn's rings.
3. The cocoon itself.
4. A limiting environment or situation.
   figuratively

Equivalents

Examples

“Amongst the particular signs testifying the same thing, are also those exhibited by worms which feed on herbs, which, when they are to undergo a metamorphosis, encompass themselves as with a womb, that they may be born again, being therein changed into nymphs and chrysalisses, and presently into beautiful butterflies, when they fly into the air as into their heaven, where the female sports with her male companion, as one conjugal partner with another, and they nourish themselves from odoriferous flowers, and lay their eggs, thus providing that their species may live after them: […]”

“The herbaceous or herbiferous produce had such gummy gelatinous properties, that tiniest tiddles incorporated themselves into huge chrysalisses, from whence monster butterflies egged it, all the world over, like snowberries, during a moist September, as soon as the blossom is by!”

“Caterpillars, chrysalisses soon reveal / The future gandy butterfly.”

“Fanny was afraid. She was like an insect new-hatched from its chrysalis, naked and unprotected in a dawn she could not face.”

“A project on butterflies! And caterpillars and chrysalisses and things, and lots of nice drawings, coloured with felt pens.”

“However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame. At the same time he cast off the chrysalis of a commonplace existence.”

“No, no matter how far Ray Kurzweil gets with his artificial intelligence project at Google, we cannot simply rise from the chrysalis of matter as pure consciousness.”

CEFR level