Also 8–9 erron. Stagyrite. [ad. L. Stagīrītēs (also Stagĕrītes), ad. Gr. Σταγειρίτης, f. Στάγειρος, also Στάγειρα (L. Stagīra) neut. pl.: see -ITE.] A native or inhabitant of Stagira, a city of Macedonia; spec. the philosopher Aristotle, who was born there.
c. 1620. T. Robinson, Mary Magd., 630. Ye Stagirite by water came.
1656. Cowley, Motto, 27. Welcome, great Stagirite, and teach me now All I was born to know.
a. 1680. Butler, Rem. (1759), I. 215. The Stagyrite, unable to expound The Euripus, leapt into it, and was drown’d.
1709. Pope, Ess. Crit., 280.
1824. Byron, Juan, XV. xxv. No lofty wing, Plumed by Longinus or the Stagyrite.
attrib. or adj. 1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., II. I. iii. The Antre de Procope has now other questions than the Three Stagyrite Unities to settle.
¶ b. Used for: ? An authority on poetics (compared to Aristotle). rare–1.
1834. Campbell, Life Mrs. Siddons, II. ix. 219. The stagyrite, Augustus Wilhelm Schlegel, wrote this diatribe on Kotzebue.
Hence Stagirism, the philosophy of Aristotle; † Stagiritic a., of or pertaining to Aristotle.
a. 1711. Ken, Hymnotheo, Poet. Wks. 1721, III. 302. A sage … Who stagiritick Errors had imbib’d, And to the World Eternity ascrib’d.
1864. New-Orleans Weekly Times, 7 May, 4/3. We notice that the stagiritic body, now sitting in Convention in Liberty Hall, have not yet resolved as to the exact manner in which our future Judges are to be chosen.
1875. Encycl. Brit., I. 466/2. But in those times of false Aristotelianism the Spagirism of Paracelsus was pitted against the Stagyrism of Aristotle.
