Crossword clues for afflatus
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Afflatus \Af*fla"tus\, n. [L., fr. afflare. See Afflation.]
A breath or blast of wind.
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A divine impartation of knowledge; supernatural impulse; inspiration.
A poet writing against his genius will be like a prophet without his afflatus.
--Spence.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. 1 A sudden rush of creative impulse or inspiration, often attributed to divine influence. 2 A breath or blast of wind.
WordNet
n. a strong creative impulse; divine inspiration; "divine afflatus"
Wikipedia
is a Latin term derived from Cicero (in (The Nature of the Gods)) that has been translated as "inspiration." Cicero's usage was a literalizing of "inspiration," which had already become figurative. As "inspiration" came to mean simply the gathering of a new idea, Cicero reiterated the idea of a rush of unexpected breath, a powerful force that would render the poet helpless and unaware of its origin.
Literally, the Latin "afflatus" means "to blow upon/toward". It was originally spelt "adflatus," made up of "ad" (to) and "flatus" (blowing/breathing), the noun form of "flāre" (to blow). It can be taken to mean "to be blown upon" by a divine wind, not unlike its English equivalent "inspiration," which comes from "inspire," meaning "to breathe/blow onto".
In English, "afflatus" is used for this literal form of inspiration. It generally refers not to the usual sudden originality, but to the staggering and stunning blow of a new idea, an idea that the recipient may be unable to explain. In Romantic literature and criticism, in particular, the usage of "afflatus" was revived for the mystical form of poetic inspiration tied to "genius", such as the story Coleridge offered for the composition of Kubla Khan. The frequent usage of the Aeolian harp as a symbol for the poet was a play on the renewed emphasis on afflatus.
See also: List of Latin phrases (N): (No great man ever existed who did not enjoy some portion of divine inspiration).
Example: ('Inspired by the Holy Spirit'), an encyclical letter of Pope Pius XII dealing with Biblical inspiration and biblical criticism, laying out his desire to see new translations from the original language instead of the Vulgate version.
Usage examples of "afflatus".
Beside all this, Roderic had had communicated to him, by a supernatural afflatus, that wondrous art, as yet unknown in the plains of Albion, of turning up the soil with a share of iron, and scattering it with a small quantity of those grains which are most useful to man, to expect to gather, after a short interval, a forty-fold increase.
It was now that there descended upon Nanty an afflatus of which he was half ashamed.
They rode over a little stone bridge above the water-wheel and through the woods, until Nell could hear the faint afflatus of the security aerostats.
His cause was an anchor to keep him steady, but it could not give this perpetual afflatus of spirit like a May morning.
The divine afflatus left him like air oozing from a punctured toy-balloon, and, like such a balloon, he seemed to grow suddenly limp and flat.
To control this disagreeable symptom, the candidates for both species of afflatus used to come to their meetings provided with napkins and rollers with which to bind their middles, and prevent the supervening inflation.
If union with such an Absolute is to be enjoyed, the will must be pulseless, the intellect atrophied, the whole soul inactive: otherwise the introduction of finite thoughts and desires inhibits the divine afflatus!
Her afflatus, divinely sweet, divinely powerful, is breathed on every human heart, and inspires every soul to some nobler sentiment, some higher thought, some greater action.
With a sense of afflatus, of pregnant illumination, he wristily typed pl.