Dictionary

saturnic en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /səˈtɝnɪk/ (General-American)
• /səˈtɜːnɪk/ (Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

From Saturn + -ic.

Meanings

1. containing lead or suffering from lead poisoning (saturnia)
   • Similarly, further studies are necessary in order to find out the exact share of responsibility of nautical activities in saturnic pollution, and the precise sources of nickel and cadmium. 1998, Henry Augier, “Metallic Contamination of Marine Flora and Fauna of the French Mediterranean Coast”, in Heavy Metal Pollution, Toxication and Chelation, page 133:
   • As regards alcohol, eight of the men, including one subject of gout and one of lead-poisoning, confined their potations to two pints of beer or less daily. Of one more, a painter, gouty and saturnic, the amount was not ascertained. 1877, ed. William Howship Dickinson, Thomas Pickering Pick, “Reports of the Medical Registrar for 1877”, in St. George’s Hospital Reports, volume 9, page 101:
2. saturnine; tending to a gloomy, melancholy, or bitter disposition
   • They made an odd-looking pair. Thomas short, round and tubby with the look of a naughty cherub, Campbell tall, saturnic and inclined to look gloomy under his wide fawn sombrero. 1965, Time & Tide, volume 46, page 21:
   • Taking into account the metaphor »scythe of Saturn« that refers to the god as well as the planet of melancholy that the title of Sebald’s book recalls from the beginning, one might consider the vision of the globe as a graveyard as part of a baroque topos of vanitas and transitoriness—in the sense that Walter Benjamin pointed to the significance of saturnic melancholy within the ruinous world of seventeenth-century German tragedies. 2017, Nicolas Pethes, “»Earth’s Slow Turning into the Dark«: Global Networks of Decay in W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn”, in Imagining Earth: Concepts of Wholeness in Cultural Constructions of Our Home Planet, page 142:
   • Don Fernan presented that union of fiery passion and saturnic manners not unusual among Spaniards. 1820, [Charles Robert Maturin], Melmoth the Wanderer: A Tale. […], volume III, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Company, and Hurst, Robinson, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 241:
3. of or relating to the planet Saturn
   • They sit on saturnic moons, they sway far out in the interstellar spaces. 1991, Giovanna Capone, European Perspectives: Contemporary Essays on Australian Literature, page 96:
   • Under these conditions the Moon could only collide with satellites in orbits external to the Moon itself since it is well-known that any sizable satellite inside the Roche limit would rapidly disintegrate into some kind of saturnic ring. 1971, Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, volume 87, page 74:
4. Saturnalian: riotously merry; dissolute
   • A remarkable example of such saturnic mime is provided by Plato’s Symposium. Its beginning is saturnalia, its ending—komos; its whole setting is not everyday-realistic but saturnic, Bacchic, and the roots of “feast” philosophy (wine and the theme of eros) lie in Bacchism-saturnism. 1997, Olga M. Freidenberg, Image and Concept: Mythopoetic Roots of Literature, page 112:

Forms