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Synonyms for ivory tower

Grammar : Noun


Définition of ivory tower

Origin :
  • as a symbol of artistic or intellectual aloofness, by 1889, from French tour d'ivoire, used in 1837 by critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869) with reference to the poet Alfred de Vigny, whom he accused of excessive aloofness.
  • Et Vigny, plus secret, comme en sa tour d'ivoire, avant midi rentrait. [Sainte-Beuve, "Pensées d'Août, à M. Villemain," 1837]
  • Used earlier as a type of a wonder or a symbol of "the ideal." The literal image is perhaps from Song of Solomon [vii:4]:
  • Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus. [KJV]
  • noun place of learning
Example sentences :
  • It is to no mere "ivory tower" of aesthetic superiority that we retreat.
  • Extract from : « Suspended Judgments » by John Cowper Powys
  • All life has streamed into your soul, and you have lived in the ivory tower.
  • Extract from : « The Goose Man » by Jacob Wassermann
  • The latch was always lifted on the front door of his ivory tower.
  • Extract from : « Unicorns » by James Huneker
  • She could never now, with a tranquil heart, go into the ivory tower.
  • Extract from : « The Brimming Cup » by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
  • Having made this pronouncement, she entered the ivory tower of her deafness and closed the door.
  • Extract from : « Crome Yellow » by Aldous Huxley
  • The king built for his daughter, in the remotest corner of his kingdom, an ivory tower.
  • Extract from : « The Old-Fashioned Fairy Book » by Constance Cary Harrison
  • Only the poet's Ivory Tower remained for us, and we climbed it ever higher and higher to be clear of the mob.
  • Extract from : « A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 » by George Saintsbury
  • And he was happy in an ivory tower and far away from the world, with its rumours of dulness, feeble crimes, and flat triumphs.
  • Extract from : « Egoists » by James Huneker
  • The world forgives much, irony never, for irony is the ivory tower of the intellectual, the last refuge of the original.
  • Extract from : « Egoists » by James Huneker
  • The vein holds from beginning to end of his work; from this writing of the eighties to "The Ivory Tower."
  • Extract from : « Instigations » by Ezra Pound

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Based on : Thesaurus.com - Gutenberg.org - Dictionary.com - Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019