Meaning of cyphonism | Babel Free

Definitions

1. An ancient punishment in which the criminal was smeared with honey and exposed to insects.
   rare, uncountable
2. An ancient form of punishment involving a sort of wooden pillory by which the victim's neck was bent or weighed downward.
   rare, uncountable

Examples

“[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.”

“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.”

“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.”

CEFR level