Prometheanadj.n.

1594 G. Chapman Σκìα Νυκτòς sig. B Therefore Promethean Poets with the coles Of their most geniale, more-then-humane soules In liuing verse, created men like these.

1596 M. Drayton Mortimeriados sig. F 2^v Like Promethian life-begetting flame.

1635 F. Quarles Emblemes iv. xiv. 237 These vultures in my Brest Gripe my Promethian heart both night and day.

1641 J. Milton Reason Church-govt. 50 With a kind of Promethean skill to shape and fashion this outward man into the similitude of a body.

1700 S. Cobb Poetae Britannici 12 Unstol'n Promethean Fire informs his Song.

1744 M. Akenside Pleasures Imagination iii. 410 With Promethean art, Into its proper vehicle he breathes The fair conception.

1765 W. Shirley Electra v. xii. 101 Oh! from my bosom rend This fierce promethean eagle, whose fell beak So mangles my poor heart.

1816 J. T. James Jrnl. Tour ii. 125 But this is a lofty walk of art, and, I must confess, they seemed to me to lack something of the Promethean Fire.

1893 Chicago Advance 28 Sept. Forceful utterances, promethean in snatching a flame from the very heavens.

1940 R. S. Stites Arts & Man xix. 810 Orozco's concluding panel, Modern Migration of the Spirit,..shows a dynamic Byzantine, Promethean Christ.

1994 Rolling Stone 16 June 119/1 Promethean in his energies,..this man of extraordinary skills could not escape his own demons and was thus driven by them.

1788 Morning Post 13 Mar. in J. Nimmo Old Times (1885) 297 G. Watts respectfully informs the public, that he has prepared a large variety of machines of a portable, and durable kind, with Promethean fire, paper and match inclosed,..procuring an instantaneous light.]

1831 John Bull 28 Nov. 11 379/1 [Jones v. Watts, speech of plaintiff's counsel.] Mr. Jones had, some time ago, invented a match to produce an instantaneous light..and he had given his ingenious invention the name of ‘Promethean’... Subsequently the plaintiff invented another description of match, which he designated with the frightful name of ‘Lucifer’.

1839 C. Darwin in R. Fitzroy & C. Darwin Narr. Surv. Voy. H.M.S. Adventure & Beagle III. iii. 47 I carried with me some promethean matches, which I ignited by biting.

1867 C. L. Bloxam Chemistry 160 The Promethean light was an ornamented scented paper spill, one end of which contained a small glass bulb of sulphuric acid [etc.].

1959 Lancaster (Ohio) Eagle-Gaz. 25 June 12/2 It must have taken a truly brave man to try the promethean match, introduced in 1828.

1890 Cent. Dict. Promethean, of or pertaining to the prometheus..: as, a promethean silkworm.

2002 Standard (St. Catharines, Ont.) (Nexis) 20 June a6 Species such as opossum, grey fox.., Fowler's toad, [and] the Promethean silk moth.

1829 T. Gill in Gill's Technol. Repository 5 l. 271 We have lately had another instantaneous light apparatus introduced under the name of the Promotheans [sic].

1833 C. Darwin Diary 9 May (1933) 147 I had in my pockets some promethians, which I ignited by biting them between my teeth.

1925 W. H. Dixon Match Industry i. 13 Another type of the oxymuriate match was prepared and sold in this country under the name of ‘Jones's Promethians’.

2000 Evening Chron. (Newcastle) (Nexis) 15 Jan. 19 At around the same time came Lucifers, Congreves, the amazingly-hazardous Prometheans—which require that you bite them to set them off—and..a self-igniting cigar.

1858 S. Birch Hist. Anc. Pottery II. 43 By the Athenians, potters were called Prometheans [Gk. Προμηθέες], from the Titan Prometheus, who made man out of clay.

1901 E. A. Ross Social Control 329 Society can only await these Prometheans and spread broadcast the fire they havestolen from the gods.

1929 G. K. Chesterton Thing 227 The only real alternative philosophies, those of the Buddhist or the Pessimist or the Promethean.

1998 Sierra (Nexis) 13 Mar. 18 The great Prometheans who unleashed the atomic bomb were..profoundly humbled by the experience.