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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Gradus

Gradus \Gra"dus\, n. [From L. gradus ad Parnassum a step to Parnassus.] A dictionary of prosody, designed as an aid in writing Greek or Latin poetry.

He set to work . . . without gradus or other help.
--T. Hughes.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
gradus

n. A handbook used as an aid in a difficult art or practice, specifically, a dictionary of Greek or Latin prosody used as a guide in writing of poetry in Greek or Latin.

Wikipedia
Gradus (disambiguation)

Gradus is the shortened form of a Latin phrase which means "Steps to Parnassus".

Gradus may also refer to:

  • step , an ancient Roman unit of length
  • gradus deiectio, Latin for "Reduction in rank"
  • Gradus Gravis affair, Latin for "Serious Degree"

Usage examples of "gradus".

Gradus is discursively seduced in a way that makes the seeming distinction between him and Kinbote, as well as that between the baroque and the simple, the cultured and the barbarous, the homosexual and the heterosexual, and the roughly masculine and the decadently effeminized, appear to be nothing more than the product of an obsessive and pedantic imagination which insists on impressing its own absurdly reductive schema on a disorderly world that consistently eludes it.

Jacob Gradus, whom Kinbote identifies as a Zemblan assassin who seeks to kill the exiled King but kills Shade instead.

Aquileia and Padua fled before the invasion of Attila, and retired to the Isle of Gradus, and Rivus Altus, or Rialto.