Penelope

//pɪˈnɛləpi// name

name ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    The faithful wife of Odysseus. Greek

    "You would be another Penelope; yet, they say, all the yarn she spun in Ulysses' absence did but fill Ithaca with moths."

  2. 2
    A female given name from Ancient Greek.

    ""She's a sort of pretend auntie - an old friend of Mummy's. Her real name's Miss Penelope Gill but we always call her Gillie." "Don't you ever let her hear you calling her Penelope!" said Mrs Lindsay, laughing. "She hates the name, though really I can't see why. I suppose it wasn't so fashionable when she was young.""

  3. 3
    A town in Texas.

Synonyms

All synonyms
genus penelope

Example

More examples

"Wilson looks forward to re-uniting with his two roommates and pet hedgehog, Penelope."

Etymology

From Ancient Greek Πηνελόπη (Pēnelópē), possibly from πηνέλοψ (pēnélops, “duck”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.