Phoenix


[fee-niks] /ˈfi nɪks/

noun
1.
(sometimes initial capital letter) a mythical bird of great beauty fabled to live 500 or 600 years in the Arabian wilderness, to burn itself on a funeral pyre, and to rise from its ashes in the freshness of youth and live through another cycle of years: often an emblem of immortality or of reborn idealism or hope.
2.
genitive Phoenicis
[fee-nahy-sis,, -nee-] /fiˈnaɪ sɪs,, -ˈni-/ (Show IPA). (initial capital letter) Astronomy. a southern constellation between Hydrus and Sculptor.
3.
a person or thing of peerless beauty or excellence; paragon.
4.
a person or thing that has become renewed or restored after suffering calamity or apparent annihilation.
[fee-niks] /ˈfi nɪks/
noun
1.
Classical Mythology.

2.
a city in and the capital of Arizona, in the central part.
3.
Military. a 13-foot (4 meters), 989-pound (445 kg), U.S. Navy air-to-air missile with radar guidance and a range of over 120 nautical miles.
[ar-uh-zoh-nuh] /ˌær əˈzoʊ nə/
noun
1.
a state in SW United States. 113,909 sq. mi. (295,025 sq. km).
Capital: Phoenix.
Abbreviation: AZ (for use with zip code), Ariz.
/ˈfiːnɪks/
noun
1.
a legendary Arabian bird said to set fire to itself and rise anew from the ashes every 500 years
2.
a person or thing of surpassing beauty or quality
/ˈfiːnɪks/
noun (Latin genitive) Phoenices (ˈfiːnɪˌsiːz)
1.
a constellation in the S hemisphere lying between Grus and Eridanus
/ˈfiːnɪks/
noun
1.
a city in central Arizona, capital city of the state, on the Salt River. Pop: 1 388 416 (2003 est)
/ˌærɪˈzəʊnə/
noun
1.
a state of the southwestern US: consists of the Colorado plateau in the northeast, including the Grand Canyon, divided from desert in the southwest by mountains rising over 3750 m (12 500 ft). Capital: Phoenix. Pop: 5 580 811 (2003 est). Area: 293 750 sq km (113 417 sq miles) Abbreviation Ariz., (with zip code) AZ
n.

Old English and Old French fenix, from Medieval Latin phenix, from Latin phoenix, from Greek phoinix, mythical bird of Arabia which flew to Egypt every 500 years to be reborn, also “the date” (fruit and tree), also “Phoenician,” literally “purple-red,” perhaps a foreign word (Egyptian has been suggested), or from phoinos “blood-red.” Exact relation and order of the senses in Greek is unclear.

Ðone wudu weardaþ wundrum fæger
fugel feþrum se is fenix hatan
[“Phoenix,” c.900]

Spelling assimilated to Greek 16c. (see ph). Figurative sense of “that which rises from the ashes of what was destroyed” is attested from 1590s. The city in Arizona, U.S., so called because it was founded in 1867 on the site of an ancient Native American settlement.

1861, originally as the name of a breakaway Confederate region of southern New Mexico; organized roughly along modern lines as a U.S. territory in 1863. From Spanish Arizonac, probably from a local name among the O’odham (Piman) people meaning “having a little spring.” Alternative theory is that it derives from Basque arizonak “good oaks.”
phoenix [(fee-niks)]

A mythical bird that periodically burned itself to death and emerged from the ashes as a new phoenix. According to most stories, the rebirth of the phoenix happened every five hundred years. Only one phoenix lived at a time.

Note: To “rise like a phoenix from the ashes” is to overcome a seemingly insurmountable setback.

Phoenix [(fee-niks)]

Capital city of Arizona.

State in the southwestern United States bordered by Utah to the north, New Mexico to the east, Mexico to the south, and California and Nevada to the west. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix.

Note: The Grand Canyon is in northwestern Arizona.

operating system
An operating system, built in BCPL on top of IBM MVT and later MVS by Cambridge University Computing Service from 1973 to 1995, which ran on the university central mainframe. All parts of the system were named after birds, including Eagle (the job scheduler, also the nearest pub), Pigeon (the mailer), GCAL (the text processor) and Wren (the command language), leading to Wren Libraries (a local pun).
Phoenix was much used by chemists in daytime and by the rest of the university in the evenings, and was only abandoned in favour of Unix in 1995; it is one reason Cambridge made little contribution to Unix until then.
Computing Service Phoenix closure memo (http://cam.ac.uk/cs/newsletter/1995/nl183/phoenix.html)
(2003-12-05)

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