uranian

1. (comparable, literary, poetic) Celestial, heavenly; uranic.Examples: "Hence is that secret pardon we bestow / In the true instinct of the grateful heart, / Upon the Sons of Song. The good they do / In the clear world of their Uranian art / Endures for ever; while the evil done / In the poor drama of the mortal scene, / Is but a passing cloud before the sun; [...]"; "Hail thou! sole Muse that, in an age of toil, / Of all the old Uranian sisterhood, / Art left to light us o'er the furrowed soil, / Of this laborious star!"; "At first sight the winds would appear to be if anything Ouranian powers of the upper air, yet it seems that sacrifices to the winds were buried, not burnt."Antonyms: chthonian, chthonic, earthbound, earthly, tellurian, telluric, terrestrialcomparableliterarypoetic

2. (comparable, literary, archaic) Homosexual; also, pederastic; relating to a man's erotic love for adolescent boys; (specifically) of poetry: conveying appreciation for young men.Examples: "To have altered my life would have been to have admitted that Uranian love is ignoble. I hold it to be noble – more noble than other forms."; "His [Plato's] Philosophical Eros is not the Uranian Eros which possessed the nation, and the Uranian doctrine is not primarily either philosophical or paederastic. It is a value attached to the masculine which included philosophy as masculine and paederasty when not anti-masculine, but was itself the idea and form of virtue."; "Before these ideals would once again become available to "homosexuality" as a positive social identity, however, the Uranian modality of male love would be rejected by the avant-garde itself as an outworn fashion."Synonyms: uranic, uranistic, homophile, homosexual, like that, queer, similisexual, that wayarchaiccomparableliterary

3. (not comparable, Greek mythology, Roman mythology) Of Aphrodite Urania, the heavenly aspect of the Greek goddess of beauty and love Aphrodite and her Roman counterpart Venus, as contrasted with the earthly aspect known as Aphrodite Pandemos: heavenly, spiritual.Examples: "For assuredly are there two Venuses; one, the eldest, the daughter of Uranus, born without a mother, whom we call the Uranian; the other younger, the daughter of Jupiter and Dione, whom we call the Pandemian;—of necessity must there also be two Loves, the Uranian and Pandemian companions of these goddesses. [...] [T]he attendant on the other, the Uranian, whose nature is entirely masculine, is the Love who inspires us with affection, and exempts us from all wantonness and libertinism."; "That this is indeed the general tendency of his [Pausanias of Athens'] speech is made clear by two remarks that follow immediately upon his differentiating the Pandemian from the Uranian gods. [...] But what is true for Aphrodite seems to be a contradiction in terms: she is both one and two and all gods must be praised—both Uranian and Pandemian—and yet only the Uranian ought to be praised [...]."Antonyms: pandemian, PandemicGreekRomannot-comparable

4. (not comparable, Greek mythology, dated) Relating to Urania, the Muse of astronomy.Examples: "Graced by nurses (art's nurse highly grac'd him) / Who fed him with pure marrow of the Muses; / And when he list, with moisture to refresh him, / He drunke cleare Helicon: cleare from abuses, / He bent his mind to pure Vranian vses, / Vranianie him did to heau'n vpreare: / And made to man, him demi-god appeare."; "Actually, this little girl-child should have been as happy as a lark. But, she wasn't. This is because her Bengali genes had her continually wish to be a Sarasvati, or Uranian Muse, to all the males who came within her ambit – incessantly inspiring them to great works of Art or Scientific discoveries."Greekdatednot-comparable

5. (not comparable, by extension, historical, rare) Of or pertaining to astronomy; astronomical.Examples: "Mr. [William] Crabtree, whom Horrox [i.e., Jeremiah Horrocks] had, by letter, invited to this Uranian banquet, and who, in mathematical knowledge, was inferior to few, very readily complied with his friend's requeſt, and intended to obſerve the tranſit [of Venus] in the ſame manner with Horrox; but the ſky was very unfavourable to him, [...]"; "When, as previously mentioned, I first learned of and thought about the favorable circumstance of this conjunction, I immediately wrote to my most esteemed associate in astronomy, W[illiam] Crabtree, a man who has few superiors in the mathematical sciences. I did not doubt that a few very attentive as observers, could be invited to such a Uranian banquet. And that hope was not disappointed."Synonyms: uranicalbroadlyhistoricalnot-comparablerare