# adoxographic
## English
### Etymology

From adoxography +‎ -ic.

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /eɪdɒkˈsɒɡɹəfik/
* (General American) IPA: /eɪdɑkˈsɑɡɹəfik/
* Hyphenation: adox‧og‧ra‧phic

### Adjective

adoxographic (not comparable)
* (rhetoric) Of or pertaining to adoxography; adoxographical.
** 1939, William Bradley Otis with Morriss H. Needleman, Outline-history of English Literature, 3rd edition, New York, N.Y.: Barnes & Noble, →OCLC, page 127:Excellent descriptive power and frequent brilliant lines in this adoxographic poem.
** 1959, Cesare Barbieri Courier, volume 2, numbers 1–2, Hartford, Conn.: Cesare Barbieri Center of Italian Studies at Trinity College, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 4:It had furnished material for the adoxographic exercises of Polycrates, Lucian, and Philostratus, and for the scepticism of Sextus Empiricus; similarly, it became a part of the stock of sixteenth century paradossi writers such as Ortensio Lando […]
** 1975, Dale B. J. Randall, Jonson's Gypsies Unmasked: Background and Theme of the Gypsies Metamorphos'd, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 124:[T]he adoxographic prettying up which he [Ben Jonson] indulged in merely drew his characters closer to the speech and manners of their courtly parallels.
** 1986, Dale B. J. Randall, "Theatres of Greatness": A Revisionary View of Ford's Perkin Warbeck [ELS Monograph Series; 37], Victoria, B.C.: University of Victoria, →ISBN, page 57:Huntly, who might be supposed to have overheard a rehearsal of the presentation, indulges in some adoxographic praise of their "rare discord of bells, pipes and tabors" […]
** 1991, Adrienne Laskier Martín, Cervantes and the Burlesque Sonnet, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 141:A more classical, adoxographic tone characterizes an encomium of the ass contained in Pero Mexía's 1547 Diálogos. In it the donkey is praised for its humility and integrity, as well as for its practicality: the she-ass's milk is recommended as both an antidote for poison and a skin cleanser, the animal is a good mount for soldiers, and even its meat is tasty.
** 1998, John [Graham Wilmot] Henderson, Fighting for Rome: Poets and Caesars, History and Civil War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 88:We should wonder what this trade-off, of sermonis amari ('so acid a talker', i.e. 'bitter whine'), v. 7, in sermo, has to say to the presentation of early Horatian poetics: the abrasive sting of an adoxographic poetry after Callimachus.
** 2001, Phiroze Vasunia, The Gift of the Nile: Hellenizing Egypt from Aeschylus to Alexander, Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 193:As Philodemus indicated in antiquity, encomia of Busiris [by Isocrates] belong to this category of "paradoxical" or "adoxographic" treatises, which flourished in nearly all periods of ancient Greek literature. These were speeches written in the encomiastic style on subjects that were immediately recognizable to ancient audiences as vile, trivial, ridiculous, or otherwise unsuited to praise.
** 2005, John W. Velz, “Adoxography as Mode of Discourse for Satan and His Underlings in Medieval Plays”, in Clifford Davidson, editor, The Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages [AMS Studies in the Middle Ages; 26], New York, N.Y.: AMS Press, →ISBN, page 101:The adoxographic pattern in the mentality of devils in Harrowing of Hell is a special case of dramatic irony […]
** 2007, Matt Ruff, Sewer, Gas and Electric: The Public Works Trilogy: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, →ISBN, page 241:As for my field, my B.A. from New Jersey State was interdisciplinary: adoxographic American cultural history combined with investigative folklore anthropology.
** 2014, Annette H. Tomarken, The Smile of Truth: The French Satirical Eulogy and Its Antecedents, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, →ISBN, pages 6–7:[…] Polycrates' encomium on mice dwelt upon their service to the Egyptians in gnawing the bowstrings and shield handles of invading enemies, while Philostratus, praising hair, gave examples of long-haired heroes at Troy. Appion's praise of adultery recalls the love affairs of Zeus and other gods, and Libanus stresses the good parentage of Thersites, ugliest of the Greeks who fought against Troy. But for all their diversity of individual arguments, the overall pattern for these playful or "adoxographic" works remains that of the serious encomium, and their subject matter can conveniently be grouped under the three broad headings of vice, disease, and animals.

#### Synonyms

* adoxographical

#### Related terms

* adoxograph
* adoxographer
* adoxographical
* adoxographically
* adoxography