anabasis

From the Ancient Greek ἀνάβασις (anábasis, “a going up, an ascent”), from ἀναβαίνω (anabaínō), from ᾰ̓νᾰ- (ana-, “up”) + βαίνω (baínō, “to go”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /əˈnæbəsɪs/

anabasis (plural anabases)

1. A military march up-country, especially that of Cyrus the Younger into Asia.
   • 1838, Thomas de Quincey, The Avenger:

     During the French anabasis to Moscow he entered our service, made himself a prodigious favorite with the whole imperial family, and even now is only in his twenty−second year.

   • 1989, Anthony Burgess, Any Old Iron:

     ‘I have a feeling that if we follow a scent of spring on the air with sufficient eagerness we’ll come to a south without snow more quickly than we think. Thalassa, thalassa. This is what the Greeks called an anabasis.’ They looked at him as if he were barmy.

   • 1989, Frederic Stewart Colwell, Rivermen, p. 47:

     The Wordsworthian journey to the source […] is more of an amble than an anabasis or strenuous heroic quest.

2. (obsolete) The first period, or increase, of a disease; augmentation.

• catabasis, katabasis

• anabasis in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• anabasis in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

From the Ancient Greek ἀνάβασις (anábasis).

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /aˈna.ba.sis/, [aˈna.ba.sɪs]

anabasis f (genitive anabasis); third declension

1. a plant: horse-tail
   • (Can we find and add a quotation of Pliny the Elder to this entry?)

Third-declension noun (i-stem).

• ănăbăsĭs in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• ănăbăsis in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette, page 121/2
• anabasis in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “anabasis” on page 125/3 of the Oxford Latin Dictionary (1st ed., 1968–82)