chrysalis – English noun declension

English noun forms of chrysalis

Noun: chrysalis
Singularchrysalis
Pluralchrysalises; chrysalides

Sample Sentences

  • Amongst the particular signs testifying the same thing, are also those exhibited by worms which feed on herbs, which, when they are to undergo a metamorphosis, encompass themselves as with a womb, that they may be born again, being therein changed into nymphs and chrysalisses, and presently into beautiful butterflies, when they fly into the air as into their heaven, where the female sports with her male companion, as one conjugal partner with another, and they nourish themselves from odoriferous flowers, and lay their eggs, thus providing that their species may live after them: […] [1828, The Athanasian Creed, Extracted from the Apocalypse or Book of Revelations Explained, of Emanuel Swedenborg, Boston, Mass.: Adonis Howard, […], page 174:]
  • The herbaceous or herbiferous produce had such gummy gelatinous properties, that tiniest tiddles incorporated themselves into huge chrysalisses, from whence monster butterflies egged it, all the world over, like snowberries, during a moist September, as soon as the blossom is by! [1857, Charles Hancock, Gaieties and Gravities for Holy Days and Holidays, London: Saunders and Otley, […], page 155:]
  • Caterpillars, chrysalisses soon reveal / The future gandy butterfly. [1865, [Johann Wolfgang von] Goethe, translated by William Barnard Clarke, Translation of Goethe’s Faust, Iˢᵗ and IIⁿᵈ Parts, Freiburg: Schmidt, page 264:]
  • Fanny was afraid. She was like an insect new-hatched from its chrysalis, naked and unprotected in a dawn she could not face. [1929, M. Barnard Eldershaw, chapter VII, in A House is Built, section VIII:]
  • A project on butterflies! And caterpillars and chrysalisses and things, and lots of nice drawings, coloured with felt pens. [1979, Sheila Lavelle, My Best Fiend, London: Hamish Hamilton, →ISBN, page 165:]
  • However, with the dainty volume my quondam friend sprang into fame. At the same time he cast off the chrysalis of a commonplace existence. [1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:]
  • No, no matter how far Ray Kurzweil gets with his artificial intelligence project at Google, we cannot simply rise from the chrysalis of matter as pure consciousness. [2020 September 1, Douglas Rushkoff, “The Privileged Have Entered Their Escape Pods”, in OneZero:]

Nouns inflected like chrysalis

chrysalis, orchis,

Etymology

From Latin chrysalis, variant of chrȳsallis, from Ancient Greek χρυσαλλίς (khrusallís), usually derived from χρυσός (khrusós, “gold, golden”) + -αλλ- + -ις (-is, “-id: forming feminine nouns”) but compare θρυαλλίς (thruallís) and ἀρυβαλλίς (aruballís), both believed to come from a Pre-Greek substrate on the basis of their unusual endings. See: Latin Nouns 'chrysalis', Ancient Greek Nouns 'χρυσαλλίς'.