CALLIOPE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Calliope

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noun

Calliope n.

(Class. Myth.) The Muse that presides over eloquence and heroic poetry; mother of Orpheus, and chief of the nine Muses.

(Astron.) One of the asteroids. See Solar.

A musical instrument consisting of a series of steam whistles, toned to the notes of the scale, and played by keys arranged like those of an organ. It is sometimes attached to steamboat boilers.

(Zool.) A beautiful species of humming bird (Stellula Calliope) of California and adjacent regions.

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Etymology of 'Calliope'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Calliope" Quotes from Famous Books

... streets bearing the names of gods, demi gods, the muses and the graces. The pronunciation given to some of these names is curious: Melpomene, instead of being given four syllables is called Melpomeen; Calliope is similarly Callioap; Euterpe, Euterp, and so on. This, however, is the result not of ignorance, but of a slight corruption of the correct French pronunciations, the Americans having taken their way of pronouncing the names from the ...

— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... American conditions. The villages of the Middle West, it asseverates, have been conquered and converted by the legions of mediocrity, and now, grown rich and vain, are setting out to carry the dingy banner, led by the booster's calliope and the evangelist's bass drum, farther than it has ever gone before—to make provincialism imperialistic; so that all the native and instinctive virtues, freedoms, powers must ...

— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... Oscar, whose artistic ear was somewhat offended by this strange roar of sounds. The young man from Baltimore assured him that this was called music; the music of a steam-organ or calliope, then a new invention on the Western rivers. He explained that it was an instrument made of a series of steam-whistles so arranged that a man, sitting where he could handle them all very rapidly, could ...

— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks

... with twelve trombones, twenty-one bassett horns and one calliope; it almost literally brought down the house, and I was the happiest man alive. As I moved out I was met by the critic of The Disciples of Tone, who said ...

— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

Words linked to "Calliope" : steam whistle, steam organ, Greek mythology, instrument, muse