SG Heritage Dictionary

Lotus [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1913

1. A name of several kinds of water lilies; as Nelumbium speciosum, used in religious ceremonies, anciently in Egypt, and to this day in Asia; Nelumbium luteum, the American lotus; and Nymphaea Lotus and N. caerulea, the respectively white-flowered and blue-flowered lotus of modern Egypt, which, with Nelumbium speciosum, are figured on its ancient monuments.

2. The lotus of the lotuseaters, probably a tree found in Northern Africa, Sicily, Portugal, and Spain (Zizyphus Lotus), the fruit of which is mildly sweet. It was fabled by the ancients to make strangers who ate of it forget their native country, or lose all desire to return to it.

3. The lote, or nettle tree. See Lote.

4. A genus (Lotus) of leguminous plants much resembling clover.

5. An ornament much used in Egyptian architecture, generally asserted to have been suggested by the Egyptian water lily.

Lotus-eater [Noun] Webster's Dictionary 1913

Alt. of Lotos-eater

Lotus-eaters Encyclopedia Britannica

LOTUS-EATERS (Greek Λωτοφάγοι) were a Libyan tribe known to the Greeks as early as the time of Homer. Herodotus (iv. 177) describes their country as in the Syrtic district, and says that a caravan route led from it to Egypt. The lotus still grows there in great abundance. It is a prickly shrub, the jujube tree, bearing a fruit of a sweet taste, compared by Herodotus to that of the date; it is still eaten by the natives, and a kind of wine is made from the juice (see Jujube). Marvellous tales were current among the early Greeks of the virtues of the lotus, as we see in Odys., ix. 84. When Ulysses comes to the coast many of his sailors eat the lotus and lose all wish to return home. The idea has been worked up by Tennyson in a very fine poem. This lotus must not be confounded with the Egyptian plant, a kind of water-lily that grows in the Nile. See Ritter, Erdkunde, i.; and Heeren, Ideen, ii., or in Historical liesearches, &c.

9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 15, p. 11
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