Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
- noun
- In the museum are two statues of the Artemis of Ephesus, whose temple, the Artemision, was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, rediscovered in the nineteenth century by a dogged and inspired English engineer, John Turtle Wood.
- one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Examples
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Among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon are often described as a marvel of ancient gardens.
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The ancient city is famous for the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Blog text (4) -
We named him after the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Fiction book (1995) -
The Great Pyramid of Giza is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World due to its remarkable engineering.
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Tourists from around the globe visit to see the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, including the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria.
Synonyms
Seven famous ancient buildings like the Great Pyramid and Hanging Gardens
Surface Forms
Morphology
seven + wonder + of + the + ancient + world
The phrase is fully compositional: 'seven' (the number) + 'wonders' (remarkable things) + 'of the ancient world' (belonging to antiquity) directly yields the meaning 'the seven remarkable constructions from ancient times'. This referential, list-type name follows transparent noun-phrase semantics and is easily inferable by a B1 learner who knows the constituent words and basic cultural concepts.
Etymology
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World comes from old Greek travellers and writers who made lists of the most amazing buildings they had seen; they picked the number seven because many people thought it was a special 'lucky' or 'complete' number and called the buildings wonders because they left people 'amazed'. So, today Seven Wonders of the Ancient World means that traditional list of seven famous ancient sites.