Noun: sop to Cerberus
Sample Sentences
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to give/throw a sop to Cerberus
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He has thrown a sop to Cerberus, and is consequently now acclaimed in sacred circles to which entrance had long been denied him. [1914 January, Alfred Hayes, “The Relation of Music to Poetry”, in The Atlantic:]
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For a moment there was a profound silence all round, and I was beginning to think that I should be accidentally shoved off the moving train, when a voice asked, ‘Have you got any English cigarettes? ’ As it happened I had a couple of packets of a brand that I very much disliked, and I distributed the contents of one all round. This sop to Cerberus had the happiest results. [1921 October, Maxwell H. H. Macartney, “An Ex-Enemy in Berlin to-Day”, in The Atlantic:]
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By calling the referendum in the first place, Cameron was offering a sop to the Cerberus of the Tory Brexiters. But in Greek mythology Cerberus was never satisfied, and demanded more. [2017 April 9, William Keegan, “Brexit hasn’t happened yet – and it is changing all the time”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:]
Nouns inflected like sop to Cerberus
greyware,
chronotropy,
urgrund,
cytosorting,
homekeeping,
pedobaiting,
winterdress,
JLNS,
rumpology,
hopkinsiaxanthin,
enchylemma,
further education,
hexobendine,
humdrumminess,
unobligingness,
backscroll,
telocinobufagin,
dosulepin,
mensuralism,
crème de framboise, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Virgil's Aeneid, where the Sibyl throws Cerberus a loaf laced with honey and herbs to induce sleep.