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Glite Dictionary
🧘 Calm and rational 🧘 A calm person
Apollonian

Apollonian

1 9.3
Calm, logical and balanced, showing order and self-control
  • adjective
  • /əˌpɒləˈnoʊniən/
  • Literature
: apolíneo
  • Her Apollonian approach to problem-solving helped the team find a balanced solution quickly.
  • Apollonian and Dionysian

Examples

  • The artist's work is characterized by an Apollonian harmony that contrasts sharply with chaotic pieces around it.

  • On the one hand, we have an Apollonian perspective which is very crisp and premeditated and intellectualized and perfect.

  • Nevertheless, by the middle of his career, his manner was widely taken as a sign of Apollonian detachment and wisdom.

    Academic text (1999)

  • His work is filled with spirituality and mathematical precision; it is music that Nietzsche would reckon to the Apollonian mode.

    Blog text (10)

  • When Diekman went to his piano and illustrated Apollonian grace with a phrase of Mozart, the turbulence below disappeared.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • In Hamburg, at about the same time, the scholar Aby Warburg diagnosed Western society as split between Apollonian and Dionysian commitments.

    Academic text (2007)

  • During the debate, she maintained an Apollonian demeanor, calmly presenting her arguments without showing any emotion.

Antonyms

Dionysian
  • Literature
3 9.9

Showing wild joy and uncontrolled pleasure like a loud festival

How Calm

serene
46 3.9
Apollonian
  • Literature
1 9.3
composed
20 4.3
relaxed
216 1.0
calm
680 1.0

Surface Forms

Apollonian positive

Morphology

Apollonian = Apollo (semi-transparent) = Apollo + ian

Formally 'Apollo' + '-ian' is clear, but the adjectival meaning ('calm, rational') depends on cultural or literary knowledge of Apollo's attributes and is not directly inferable by all learners.

Etymology

Apollonian comes from the Greek god Apollo, who stood for light, music and 'order' and 'reason'. So something Apollonian is calm, balanced and orderly.