cassandra means A prophetess who was daughter of King Priam of Troy and his queen Hecuba. She captured the eye of Apollo and was granted the ability to see the future; however, she was destined never to be believed.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, cassandra ranks #7,181 of 14,308 for Most Malleable Words.
cassandra is pronounced /kəˈsæn.dɹə/.
Why “cassandra” is a great word
A person who makes dire predictions that are disbelieved but later prove true. From the Ancient Greek Κασσάνδρα (Kassándra), the name of a Trojan prophetess in mythology. Unlike a "prophet," whose forecasts may be received with awe, or an "alarmist," who traffics in shrill exaggeration, a Cassandra speaks with terrible clarity and is met only with the polite, unyielding wall of disbelief. It is the scent of smoke dismissed on a windless night; the engineer pointing to the hairline fracture in the support beam the night before the celebration; the analyst mapping the housing bubble's collapse while traders laughed—the profound isolation of being right in a world committed to being wrong, belief arriving only in ashes.
Etymology
From Ancient Greek Κασσάνδρα (Kassándra).
name
- A prophetess who was daughter of King Priam of Troy and his queen Hecuba. She captured the eye of Apollo and was granted the ability to see the future; however, she was destined never to be believed.“And so when Cassandra foretold the evils that were to come upon Troy, even her own people would not credit her words.”
- A female given name from Ancient Greek.“But succeeding ages (little regarding S. Chrysosthome's admonition to the contrary) have recalled prophane names, so as now Diana, Cassandra, Hyppolytus, Venus, Lais, names of unhappy disaster are as rife, as ever they were in paganism.”
- An unincorporated community in Walker County, Georgia, United States.
- A small borough in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, United States.
noun
- A person who makes dire predictions, especially those which are not believed but which turn out to be true.“"Well, take my word for it, those girls will never marry; marriage is like money—seem to want it, and you never get it." The Cassandra was scarcely departed, when the objects of her oracle appeared—Mrs. Fergusson and her two daughters.”
- Synonym of leather leaf (“Chamaedaphne calyculata”).“Very commonly the forerunner of mat formation is the cassandra (Chamaedaphne calyculata). This shrub occurs both along the shore and along the edges of the advancing mat and frequently grows out several feet into the open water.”
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