The Collaborative International Dictionary
Sibylline \Sib"yl*line\, a. [L. sibyllinus.] Pertaining to the sibyls; uttered, written, or composed by sibyls; like the productions of sibyls. Sibylline books.
(Rom. Antiq.) Books or documents of prophecies in verse concerning the fate of the Roman empire, said to have been purchased by Tarquin the Proud from a sibyl.
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Certain Jewish and early Christian writings purporting to have been prophetic and of sibylline origin. They date from 100 b. c. to
d. 500.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1570s, from Latin sibyllinus, from sibylla (see sibyl).
Wiktionary
a. 1 Of or pertaining to a sibyl or female oracle, especially the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumaean%20Sibyl and the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibylline%20Books. 2 (context by extension English) Having oracle-like predicting powers, clairvoyant. 3 mysterious alt. 1 Of or pertaining to a sibyl or female oracle, especially the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumaean%20Sibyl and the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibylline%20Books. 2 (context by extension English) Having oracle-like predicting powers, clairvoyant. 3 mysterious
WordNet
adj. resembling or characteristic of a prophet or prophecy; "the high priest's divinatory pronouncement"; "mantic powers"; "a kind of sibylline book with ready and infallible answers to questions" [syn: divinatory, mantic, sibyllic, vatic, vatical]
having a secret or hidden meaning; "cabalistic symbols engraved in stone"; "cryptic writings"; "thoroughly sibylline in most of his pronouncements"- John Gunther [syn: cabalistic, kabbalistic, qabalistic, cryptic, cryptical]
Wikipedia
Sibylline is a Belgian comics series by Raymond Macherot and his second best known work after Chlorophylle. Just like the latter it's a fantasy comic about anthropomorphic animals in a forest setting. However, here the protagonist is a female mouse named Sibylline.
Usage examples of "sibylline".
These were the Sibylline books, which the Romans consulted as a divine oracle by some one of the Quindecemvirs, and this is believed to have been the origin of the Quindecemvirate.
Ac Sibylline books as regularized by Augustus, I can interpret the verses with some confidence.
He also called in and destroyed all unauthorised private collections of Sibylline oracles as well as all other books of public prediction that he could lay his hands upon, to the number of over two thousand.
Roman State possessed a series of prophecies written in Greek and called the Sibylline Books.
There was something mysterious about the origin of the sibylline books.
The sibylline oracles were held in so great veneration among the ancients, that nothing of importance was undertaken without consulting them.
August 1972 to December 1973 in which the conceit was that a personified and all-knowing female pudendum answered the queries of male readers with witty and sometimes sibylline responses.
The Sibylline Books prophesied that an enemy of Rome would perish on the day of the battle, and of course Maxentius said it must be me, and the astrologers were muttering darkly about a conjunction of Mars, Saturn, Jupiter and Venus in Capricorn.
I was in the company of a sibylline intelligence which was discounting the promises of the remote future long before they were due,--all this made the task a grave one.
Law tablets and records of unparalleled antiquity had gone, as had the Sibylline Books and many other prophetic documents upon which Rome relied for godly guidance in times of crisis.
Impossible to think of herself with a name like that and yet names are the animal badges we wear, given not only for practical necessity but to serve as a subscript to the inner person, a primitive index of the soul, and how could she be certain, sibylline instincts or not, that the name the novelist had given her would not in the end find its rightful soul to wear.
Liriel said with sibylline solemnity, and then Javanne almost dragged Margaret away from her daughter.
Sometimes her pronouncements have an eerie sibylline quality, as though she prophesied a future that had no past.
If this is neither a dream book nor a Sibylline history, then it is a theory of world revolution.
I before hinted, from so many scraps and Sibylline leaves, including margins of blank pages that unfortunately I must be my own scribe, and, not done by myself, they will be all but lost.