Byzant \Byz"ant\, Byzantine \Byz"an*tine\ (-[a^]n"t[imac]n)
n.[OE. besant, besaunt, F. besant, fr. LL. Byzantius,
Byzantinus, fr. Byzantium.] (Numis.)
A gold coin, so called from being coined at Byzantium. See
Bezant.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Byzantine \By*zan"tine\ (b[i^]*z[a^]n"t[i^]n), a.
Of or pertaining to Byzantium. -- n. A native or inhabitant
of Byzantium, now Constantinople; sometimes, applied to an
inhabitant of the modern city of Constantinople. [Written
also Bizantine.]
[1913 Webster]
Byzantine church, the Eastern or Greek church, as
distinguished from the Western or Roman or Latin church.
See under Greek.
Byzantine empire, the Eastern Roman or Greek empire from a.
d. 364 or a. d. 395 to the capture of Constantinople by
the Turks, a. d. 1453.
Byzantine historians, historians and writers (Zonaras,
Procopius, etc.) who lived in the Byzantine empire. --P.
Cyc.
Byzantine style (Arch.), a style of architecture developed
in the Byzantine empire.
Note: Its leading forms are the round arch, the dome, the
pillar, the circle, and the cross. The capitals of the
pillars are of endless variety, and full of invention.
The mosque of St. Sophia, Constantinople, and the
church of St. Mark, Venice, are prominent examples of
Byzantine architecture.
[1913 Webster]
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Byzantine
adj 1: of or relating to the Eastern Orthodox Church or the rites
performed in it; "Byzantine monks"; "Byzantine rites"
2: of or relating to or characteristic of the Byzantine Empire
or the ancient city of Byzantium
3: highly involved or intricate; "the Byzantine tax structure";
"convoluted legal language"; "convoluted reasoning";
"intricate needlework"; "an intricate labyrinth of refined
phraseology"; "the plot was too involved"; "a knotty
problem"; "got his way by labyrinthine maneuvering"; "Oh,
what a tangled web we weave"- Sir Walter Scott; "tortuous
legal procedures"; "tortuous negotiations lasting for
months" [syn: convoluted, intricate, involved, knotty,
labyrinthine, tangled, tortuous]
4: characterized by elaborate scheming and intrigue; devious;
"Byzantine methods for holding on to his chairmanship"; "a
fine hand for Byzantine deals and cozy arrangements"
n : a native or inhabitant of Byzantium or of the Byzantine
Empire
WordNet (r) 2.0
68 Moby Thesaurus words for "Byzantine":
Machiavellian, artful, balled up, calculating, canny, collusive,
complex, complicated, confounded, confused, connivent, conniving,
conspiring, contriving, convoluted, crabbed, crafty, cunning,
daedal, designing, devious, elaborate, embrangled, entangled,
fouled up, foxy, gordian, guileful, implicated, insidious,
intricate, intriguing, involuted, involved, knotted, knotty,
knowing, labyrinthian, labyrinthine, loused up, many-faceted,
matted, mazy, meandering, messed up, mixed up, mucked up,
multifarious, pawky, perplexed, plotting, ramified, roundabout,
scheming, screwed up, shrewd, slick, sly, snarled, sophisticated,
stratagemical, subtile, subtle, tangled, tangly, twisted, up to,
wily
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
Byzantine
A term describing any system that has
so many labyrinthine internal interconnections that it would
be impossible to simplify by separation into loosely coupled
or linked components.
The city of Byzantium, later renamed Constantinople and then
Istanbul, and the Byzantine Empire were vitiated by a
bureaucratic overelaboration bordering on lunacy: quadruple
banked agencies, dozens or even scores of superfluous levels
and officials with high flown titles unrelated to their actual
function, if any.
Access to the Emperor and his council was controlled by
powerful and inscrutable eunuchs and by rival sports factions.
[Edward Gibbon, "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"].
(1999-01-15)
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03)
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