Proserpina
name ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The goddess of springtime, queen of the underworld and the wife of Pluto; the Roman equivalent of Persephone. Roman
"Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath; / For these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death."
- 2 26 Proserpina, a main-belt asteroid.
- 3 A fictitious planet beyond Pluto.
Example
More examples"Thou art more than the Gods who number the days of our temporal breath; / For these give labour and slumber; but thou, Proserpina, death."
Etymology
From Latin Prōserpina from Ancient Greek Περσεφόνη (Persephónē) by metathesis perhaps first in Magna Graecia via a Sicilian Doric Greek Προσερπίνα (Proserpína) or Ionic Greek Προσερπίνη (Proserpínē), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *pers-o- (“sheaf of corn, grain, seed”) and *gʷʰn̥-t- (“to strike”), meaning 'grain-thresher' or 'She-who-threshes-the-grain'.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.