epithetus

Epithetus is a term occasionally used in literary linguistics to refer to a class of fixed, formulaic descriptive phrases that function as conventional epithets or labels for persons, beings, or entities within a text. In this usage, an epithetus acts as a stable descriptor that operates like a nickname or title, often recurring across passages and helping to shape audience expectations about a character or object.

Etymology and usage history

The word epithetus is drawn from the family of words around epithet and epithetos, with scholars sometimes employing it to discuss how traditional epithets become integrated into a work’s stylistic system. It is not widely adopted as a standard category in all dictionaries or grammars, but it appears in some philological and rhetorical discussions as a concise way to indicate a persistent evaluative descriptor that functions almost as part of a name.

Characteristics

An epithetus is typically formulaic and mnemonic, contributing to the oral texture of a text. It can encode evaluative meaning (such as courage, speed, or beauty) and may help listeners or readers recognize figures quickly. While many epithets in epic poetry resemble epithetuses, not every fixed descriptor qualifies; the epithetus label is used when the phrase becomes a conventional, nearly autonomous unit within the work’s diction.

Examples

Common epic epithets like “swift-footed” or “rosy-fingered” illustrate the phenomenon that epithetuses describe, though the term itself is a scholarly descriptor for the class of stable phrases rather than a specific phrase.

See also

Epithet, formulaic diction, Homeric epithet, philology.