Meaning of Lethe | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The personification of oblivion, daughter of Eris.
   Greek
2. Forgetfulness of the past; oblivion.
   uncountable, usually
3. Death.
   obsolete, rare, uncountable, usually
4. The river which flows through Hades from which the souls of the dead drank so that they would forget their time on Earth.
   Greek
5. Dissimulation.
   uncountable, usually

Equivalents

Examples

“No wonder these mortal Folks have so many Complaints, […] if they were dead now, and to be settled here for ever, they'd be damn'd before they'd make such a Rout come over—“But care, I suppose, is thirsty; and till they have drench’d themselves with Lethe, there will be no quiet among ’em” however, I’ll e’en to work; and so, friend Æsop, and brother Mercury, good bye to ye.”

“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, / Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains / One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:”

“For two-and-twenty years he [Doctor Guillotin], unguillotined, shall hear nothing but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive Cæsar’s.”

“By the grey sea-side, unassuaged, unheard of, / Unbeloved, unseen in the ebb of twilight, / Ghosts of outcast women return lamenting, / Purged not in Lethe,”

“A well-fed man is not driven to drink by the craving that torments the hungry; and the comfortable do not crave for the boon of forgetfulness. Gin is the only Lethe of the miserable.”

“When we have done penance, and are purified, and have drunk of the fountain of Lethe and bathed in the fountain of Eunoe, the mistress of our soul raises us to the Paradise of Heaven.”

“oblivion n.: Lethe. In Greek mythology, Lethe (pronounced LEEthee) is one of the several rivers of Hades. Those who drink from it experience complete forgetfulness. Today it is used to refer to one in an oblivious or forgetful state.”

“So in the Lethe of thy angry ſoule, Thou drowne the ſad remembrance of thoſe wrongs, Which thou ſuppoſest I haue done to thee.”

“Till that the conquering Wine hath ſteep't our ſenſe, In ſoft and delicate Lethe.”

“What does it mean to say that the stream of silence originates in lethe? It means, above all, that the stream has its source (Quelle) in that which has not yet been said and which must remain unsaid: the "unsaid."”

“Pardon me Iulius, here was't thou bay'd braue Hart, Heere did'ſt thou fall, and heere thy Hunters ſtand Sign'd in thy Spoyle, and Crimſon'd in thy Lethee.”

CEFR level