Catapeltic
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A catapult. obsolete, rare
"That artillery which afterward so much promoted the victories of the Roman armies, machinery for shooting darts and stones of size far beyond the strength of man's arm to throw, (Diodorus [Siculus] calls it the catapeltic) was now either invented, or first perfected, so as to be valuable for practice."
- 1 Pertaining to a catapult or catapults. archaic, not-comparable
"[T]he superior discipline and skill of the Romans were fully compensated by the strength of position and the catapeltic engines of the Macedonians."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"[T]he superior discipline and skill of the Romans were fully compensated by the strength of position and the catapeltic engines of the Macedonians."
Etymology
PIE word *ḱóm The adjective is a learned borrowing from Ancient Greek κᾰτᾰπελτῐκός (kătăpeltĭkós, “of or for a catapult”) + English -ic (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives from nouns). Κᾰτᾰπελτῐκός (Kătăpeltĭkós) is derived from κᾰτᾰπέλτης (kătăpéltēs) + -ῐκός (-ĭkós, suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives from nouns); while κᾰτᾰπέλτης (kătăpéltēs) is a literary form of κᾰτᾰπᾰ́λτης (kătăpắltēs, “catapult; torture instrument”), from κᾰτᾰ- (kătă-, prefix meaning ‘against’) + πάλλω (pállō, “to poise or sway a missile before it is thrown; to brandish a weapon; (passive) to swing or dash oneself”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pel- (“to beat; to drive; to push”)) + -της (-tēs, suffix forming masculine agent nouns). The noun is derived from the adjective.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.