phoenix

 
Pronunciation: /ˈfiːnɪks/

noun

  • (in classical mythology) a unique bird that lived for five or six centuries in the Arabian desert, after this time burning itself on a funeral pyre and rising from the ashes with renewed youth to live through another cycle.
  • a person or thing regarded as uniquely remarkable in some respect: I’m that phoenix, the old-fashioned family doctor

Phrases

rise like a phoenix from the ashes

emerge renewed after apparent disaster or destruction: the team began their brave attempt to rise like some phoenix from the ashes

Origin:

from Old French fenix, via Latin from Greek phoinix 'Phoenician, reddish purple, or phoenix'. The relationship between the Greek senses is obscure: it could not be ‘the Phoenician bird’ because the legend centres on the temple at Heliopolis in Egypt, where the phoenix is said to have burnt itself on the altar. Perhaps the basic sense is 'purple', symbolic of fire and possibly the primary sense of Phoenicia as the purple land (or land of the sunrise)

Spelling help

The beginning of phoenix is spelled phoe-.