Sybaritic
adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Of or having the qualities of a sybarite (“a person devoted to luxury and pleasure”); dedicated to excessive comfort and enjoyment; decadent, hedonistic, self-indulgent.
"His belly is a Ceſterne of receit, / A grand Confounder of demulcing Meate. / A Sabariticke Sea, a depthleſſe Gulfe, / A ſenceleſſe Vulture, a corroding VVolfe."
- 2 Of or relating to Sybaris or its inhabitants.
"This last passage of Jamblichuns, where he intimates that Cyclon's conspiracy came quickly after the Sybaritic war, being not only corrupted in original, but most miserably handled in the Latin translation; […]"
- 3 Alternative letter-case form of sybaritic (“of or having the qualities of a sybarite (“a person devoted to luxury and pleasure”); dedicated to excessive comfort and enjoyment; decadent, hedonistic, self-indulgent”). alt-of
"[S]he, for whom attendant maidens had smoothed the Sybaritic sheet of finest texture, […]"
- 1 displaying luxury and furnishing gratification to the senses wordnet
Example
More examples"We spent a sybaritic week in Italy."
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin Sybarīticus (“of or pertaining to Sybaris or its inhabitants”) + English -ic (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’, forming adjectives from nouns). Sybarīticus is derived from Ancient Greek Συβαρῑτικός (Subarītikós), from Σῠβᾰρῑ́της (Sŭbărī́tēs, “(noun) inhabitant of Sybaris; (adjective) decadent; self-indulgent”) (from Σῠ́βᾰρῐς (Sŭ́bărĭs, “Sybaris”) + -ῑ́της (-ī́tēs, suffix forming demonyms)) + -κός (-kós, suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’, forming adjectives). The English word is analysable as Sybarite (“inhabitant of Sybaris”) + -ic. Sybaris, a city of Magna Graecia (the coastal parts of Sicily and southern Italy once colonized by Greek settlers), was known for its wealth and the excesses and hedonism of its inhabitants.
Related phrases
More for "sybaritic"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.