Pl. sometimes -a. [a. Gr. εἴδωλον (see IDOL, IDOLUM) image, spectre, phantom.] An unsubstantial image, spectre, phantom.
1828. Carlyle, Misc. (1857), I. 137. Flying through the air, and living … with mere Eidolons.
1830. Scott, Demonol., i. 36. Calling up his eidolon in the hall of his former greatness.
a. 1849. Poe, Dreamland. An Eidolon named Night On a black throne reigns upright.
1850. Mrs. Browning, Poems, II. 155. How Ulysses left the sunlight For the pale eidola race.
1875. B. Taylor, Faust, I. xxi. 193. It is a magic shape, a lifeless eidolon.
1876. Lowell, Among my Bks., Ser. II. (1873), 174. No real giant, but a pure eidolon of the mind.
b. Optics.
1881. G. R. Piggott, in Nature, No. 622. 515. If [the objects are] transparent … strange eidola are generated difficult of interpretation and dispersion.
Hence Eidolic a., of the nature of an eidolon. Eidoloclast [f. Gr. κλάστης breaker; cf. Iconoclast], one who demolishes idols.
1881. G. R. Piggott, in Nature, No. 622. 515. The earlier … plates … teem with eidolic varieties of form.
1824. De Quincey, Goethe, Wks. 1863, XII. 191. Let the object of the false worship … be made his own eidoloclast.
