Crossword clues for swastika
swastika
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Greek cross with arms bent at right angles, 1871 (in English specifically as emblem of the Nazi party from 1932), from Sanskrit svastika-s, literally "being fortunate," from svasti-s "well-being, luck," from su- "well" (from PIE *(e)su- "good") + as-, root of asti "(he) is," which is from the same PIE root as Latin esse "to be" (see essence).\n
\nAlso known as gammadion (Byzantine), cross cramponnee (heraldry), Thor's hammer, and, perhaps, fylfot. Originally an ancient cosmic or religious symbol thought to bring good luck. Use in reference to the Nazi emblem first recorded in English in 1932. The German word was Hakenkreuz, literally "hook-cross."
Wiktionary
n. A cross with arms of equal length all bent halfway along at a 90° angle to the right or to the left, used as a religious symbol by various ancient and modern civilizations, and adopted more recently (with arms angled to the right) as a symbol of Nazism and fascism.
WordNet
n. the official emblem of the Nazi Party and the Third Reich; a cross with the arms bent at right angles in a clockwise direction [syn: Hakenkreuz]
Wikipedia
The swastika (as a character: 卐 or 卍) is an ancient religious symbol that generally takes the form of an equilateral cross, with its four legs bent at 90 degrees. It is considered to be a sacred and auspicious symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism and dates back to before the 2nd century BC. It continues to be commonly used as a religious symbol in Indian religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
Western literature's older term for the symbol, gammadion cross, derives mainly from its appearance, which is identical to four Greek gamma letters affixed to each other. The name swastika comes from the Sanskrit word svastika ( Devanāgarī: स्वास्तिक), meaning "lucky or auspicious object".
It has been used as a decorative element in various cultures since at least the Neolithic. It is known most widely as an important symbol, long used in Indian religions, denoting "auspiciousness."
It was adopted as such in pre-World War I-Europe and later, and most notably, by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany prior to World War II. In many Western countries, the swastika has been highly stigmatized because of its use in and association with Nazism.
The swastika design is known from artefacts of various cultures since the Neolithic, and it recurs with some frequency on artefacts dated to the Germanic Iron Age, i.e. the Migration period to Viking Age period in Scandinavia, including the Vendel era in Sweden, attested from as early as the 3rd century in Elder Futhark inscriptions and as late as the 9th century on Viking Age image stones.
In older literature, the symbol is known variously as gammadion, fylfot, crux gothica, flanged thwarts, or angled cross. English use of the Sanskritism swastika for the symbol dates to the 1870s, at first in the context of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, but from the 1890s also in cross-cultural comparison.
Examples include a 2nd-century funerary urn of the Przeworsk culture, the 3rd century Værløse Fibula from Zealand, Denmark, the Gothic spearhead from Brest-Litovsk, Russia, the 9th century Snoldelev Stone from Ramsø, Denmark, and numerous Migration Period bracteates. The swastika is drawn either left-facing or right-facing, sometimes with "feet" attached to its four legs.
The symbol is closely related to the triskele, a symbol of three-fold rotational symmetry, which occurs on artefacts of the same period. When considered as a four-fold rotational symmetrical analogue of the triskele, the symbol is sometimes also referred to as tetraskele.
The swastika symbol in the Germanic Iron Age has been interpreted as having a sacral meaning, associated with either Odin or Thor.
Swastika is a symbol with an equilateral cross, with four arms bent at 90 degrees.
Swastika may also refer to:
Usage examples of "swastika".
The searchlights and the giant swastika flags threw Hitler into a sort of central focus and Allegro was on his feet, gesturing lightly but convulsively with his hands.
Japanese battleships and aircraft carriers sailing into the Mediterranean under the Rising Sun flag, through a Suez Canal flying the swastika!
I suddenly passed a large cluster of people and motorcycles grouped around a gray pickup truck with a swastika painted on the side.
He sees KILL ALL SPIX and NIGERS, the message flanked by swastikas, and wonders at verbal depletion so complete the sufferer cannot even spell his favorite epithets.
No culture of antiintellectual rednecks who have nothing better to do than paint swastikas on temple doors and debate Abortion, prayer in schools, and evolution.
Motorcycle gangs from Olcott Beach, and Erie, Pennsylvania, with straggly greasy hair, beards and black leather and swastika tattoos whose leaders, photographed for the Buffalo News, resembled older, coarsened brothers of John Reddy Heart.
Meanwhile, in one inset tableau, thugs wearing swastikas prepared to violate five of the coifed sisterhood, Gertrude, lily, conspicuous by her tallness among them, and, in another, Father Tom Hopkins, S.
Happy burghers in lederhosen, smiling frauleins in dirndls and pigtails and wooden shoes, cottages draped in swastika bunting.
He made the usual disclaimers regarding the swastikas and Iron Crosses ( That don't mean nothin, we buy that stuff in dime stores ), but just about the time the man seemed satisfied that it was all a rude put-on, Barger unloaded one of those jarring ad libs that have made him a favorite among Bay area newsmen.
It was an art film with a rock-'n'-roll score, a bizarre little comment on twentieth century America, using motorcycles, swastikas and aggressive homosexuality as a new culture trilogy.
High overhead, a hammer-beam ceiling soared up to the center of the roof, and the walls were hung from ceiling to floor with long, narrow banners of crimson, like tapestries, each bearing the white circle and black swastika symbol of the Third Reich.
Wearing that coal scuttle with its painted swastika set Bagnall’.
The General peers upwards and sees, a hundred meters above them, a circle of radiant green-blue jungle quartered by the spinning swastika of a big electric fan.
Sunday in Sunday out: the Brösen pier floated twelve flags on twelve flagpoles: at first only the flags of the Baltic cities -- gradually more and more swastika flags.
I still can't stop putting you on the shimmering boards of the Brösen pier: One Sunday in the following year, but in the same month, to wit, the stormy month of August crawling with jellyfish, when once again men, women, and children with beach bags and rubber animals left the dusty suburb of Langfuhr and rode to Brösen, for the most part to station themselves on the free beach and in the bathing establishment, in lesser part to promenade on the pier, on a day when eight flags of Baltic cities and four swastika flags flapped sluggishly on twelve flagpoles, when out at sea a storm was piling up over Oxhoft, when the red jellyfish were stinging and the nonstinging bluish-white jellyfish were blossoming in the lukewarm sea -- one Sunday, then, in August Jenny got lost.