"sop to Cerberus" meaning in English

See sop to Cerberus in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Etymology: From Virgil's Aeneid, where the Sibyl throws Cerberus a loaf laced with honey and herbs to induce sleep. Head templates: {{en-noun|?}} sop to Cerberus
  1. Something given or done to pacify or bribe.

Alternative forms

{
  "etymology_text": "From Virgil's Aeneid, where the Sibyl throws Cerberus a loaf laced with honey and herbs to induce sleep.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "?"
      },
      "expansion": "sop to Cerberus",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with collocations",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with collocations",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "to give/throw a sop to Cerberus",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1914 January, Alfred Hayes, “The Relation of Music to Poetry”, in The Atlantic:",
          "text": "He has thrown a sop to Cerberus, and is consequently now acclaimed in sacred circles to which entrance had long been denied him.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1921 October, Maxwell H. H. Macartney, “An Ex-Enemy in Berlin to-Day”, in The Atlantic:",
          "text": "For a moment there was a profound silence all round, and I was beginning to think that I should be accidentally shoved off the moving train, when a voice asked, ‘Have you got any English cigarettes? ’ As it happened I had a couple of packets of a brand that I very much disliked, and I distributed the contents of one all round. This sop to Cerberus had the happiest results.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2017 April 9, William Keegan, “Brexit hasn’t happened yet – and it is changing all the time”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
          "text": "By calling the referendum in the first place, Cameron was offering a sop to the Cerberus of the Tory Brexiters. But in Greek mythology Cerberus was never satisfied, and demanded more.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something given or done to pacify or bribe."
      ],
      "id": "en-sop_to_Cerberus-en-noun-bkEE8PmN",
      "links": [
        [
          "pacify",
          "pacify"
        ],
        [
          "bribe",
          "bribe"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "sop to Cerberus"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "From Virgil's Aeneid, where the Sibyl throws Cerberus a loaf laced with honey and herbs to induce sleep.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "?"
      },
      "expansion": "sop to Cerberus",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English nouns with unknown or uncertain plurals",
        "English terms derived from fiction",
        "English terms with collocations",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "to give/throw a sop to Cerberus",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1914 January, Alfred Hayes, “The Relation of Music to Poetry”, in The Atlantic:",
          "text": "He has thrown a sop to Cerberus, and is consequently now acclaimed in sacred circles to which entrance had long been denied him.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1921 October, Maxwell H. H. Macartney, “An Ex-Enemy in Berlin to-Day”, in The Atlantic:",
          "text": "For a moment there was a profound silence all round, and I was beginning to think that I should be accidentally shoved off the moving train, when a voice asked, ‘Have you got any English cigarettes? ’ As it happened I had a couple of packets of a brand that I very much disliked, and I distributed the contents of one all round. This sop to Cerberus had the happiest results.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2017 April 9, William Keegan, “Brexit hasn’t happened yet – and it is changing all the time”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:",
          "text": "By calling the referendum in the first place, Cameron was offering a sop to the Cerberus of the Tory Brexiters. But in Greek mythology Cerberus was never satisfied, and demanded more.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something given or done to pacify or bribe."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "pacify",
          "pacify"
        ],
        [
          "bribe",
          "bribe"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "sop to Cerberus"
}

Download raw JSONL data for sop to Cerberus meaning in English (1.9kB)


This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-21 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (d8cb2f3 and 4e554ae). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.