Melchior
name, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A very large wine bottle (named after the King) with the capacity of about 18 liters, equivalent to 24 standard bottles.
- 1 One of the Magi according to medieval Christian legend.
- 2 A male given name from Hebrew.
"So twin boys, our fathers, were born in the USA. Melchior and Peregrine. What names, eh? What delusions of grandeur went into the naming of them? If you shorten them to 'Mel' and 'Perry', they've got a democratically twentieth-century and transatlantic ring to them."
Example
More examples"So twin boys, our fathers, were born in the USA. Melchior and Peregrine. What names, eh? What delusions of grandeur went into the naming of them? If you shorten them to 'Mel' and 'Perry', they've got a democratically twentieth-century and transatlantic ring to them."
Etymology
From Latin Melchior, from Hebrew מלכיאור (“king of light”), from מלך (“king”) + אור (“light”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.