puzzle over
To think carefully and try to understand something complicated
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Where will you be? Anywhere UK & IrelandUnited StatesOnline slangBusiness jargon
puzzle through
To figure something out with difficulty or confusion
puzzle-cause
A lawyer who has a confused understanding.
puzzle-text
An ignorant blundering parson.
pyah
Weak, useless, paltry. This word, much in use among sailors, is evidently derived from the Indian term PARIAH, signifying the lowest caste of Hindoos. Thus the Pariah dogs in India are termed PYAH dogs; and the Pariah descendants of the old Portuguese settlers are called PYAH Portuguese. Sailors term the natives of St. Helena—a wretched-looking set of individuals—PYAH Englishmen.
Pygmalion and Galatea
A relationship where one person molds or transforms another
pygostole
The least irreverent of names for the peculiar M. B. coats worn by Tractarian curates:—
pyjands
A kind of drawers or loose pantaloons.—Anglo-Indian.
pyrrhic dance
ISee PYRRHIC. Salic dances, instituted by Numa Pompilius in honour of Mars. They were executed by twelve priests selected from the highest of the nobility, and the dances were performed in the temple while sacrifices were being made and hymns sung to the god.
pyrrhic victory
A ruinous victory. Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, after his victory over the Romans at Asculum (279 B.C.), when he lost the flower of his army, said to those sent to congratulate him, "One more such victory and Pyrrhus is undone.
pythagorean philosopher
He professed to have powers of rnagic and it was he who discovered that the young Phoenician woman whom Memppus Lycius intended to wed was in fact a serpent, or lamia. This story was noted by Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy, and it forms the subject of Keats's Lamia.
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