Word Direct Answers

What does "muse" mean?

Muse: (Class. Myth.) One of the nine goddesses who presided over song and the different kinds of poetry, and also the arts and sciences; -- often used in the plural. Granville commands; your aid, O Muses, bring: What Muse for Granville can refuse to sing Pope. Note: The names of the Muses were Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polymnia or Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, and Urania.

Additional senses

  1. 2.A particular power and practice of poetry. Shak.
  2. 3.A poet; a bard. [R.] Milton.
  3. 4.To think closely; to study in silence; to meditate. "Thereon mused he." Chaucer. He mused upon some dangerous plot. Sir P. Sidney.
  4. 5.To be absent in mind; to be so occupied in study or contemplation as not to observe passing scenes or things present; to be in a brown study. Daniel.
  5. 6.To wonder. [Obs.] Spenser. B. Jonson. See Ponder.
  6. 7.To think on; to meditate on. Come, then, expressive Silence, muse his praise. Thomson.
  7. 8.To wonder at. [Obs.] Shak.
  8. 9.Contemplation which abstracts the mind from passing scenes; absorbing thought; hence, absence of mind; a brown study. Milton.
  9. 10.Wonder, or admiration. [Obs.] Spenser.

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