pallas athena
n · noun
Simple meaning
"Pallas Athena" is a song written by David Bowie in 1993 for the album Black Tie White Noise.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
paluhsuhtheenuhSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpæləsəˈθinə
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
n
"Pallas Athena" is a song written by David Bowie in 1993 for the album Black Tie White Noise.
Athena, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek goddess of wisdom.
A c. 1657 oil-on-canvas painting by Rembrandt that belongs to the collection of Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon.
noun
Greek mythology
Goddess of wisdom and useful arts and prudent warfare; guardian of Athens; identified with Roman Minerva
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: "Pallas Athena" is a song written by David Bowie in 1993 for the album Black Tie White Noise.
Used this way, pallas athena is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in technical or specialist writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.