[a. Gr. Θέτις, proper name.]
1. Gr. and Rom. Mythology. One of the Nereids or sea-nymphs, the mother of Achilles; poetically, the sea personified.
1422. Lydg., Min. Poems (Percy Soc.), 14. Thetes wiche is of water chef Goddes.
c. 1620. T. Robinson, Mary Magd., 14. Neptune too, and Thetis greene, In my palace may bee seen.
1711. Shaftesb., Charac. (1737), II. 396. The bridegroom-doge, who in his stately Bucentaur floats on the bosom of his Thetis, has less possession than the poor shepherd, who from a hanging rock … admires her beauty.
1718. Pope, Iliad, XIII. 487.
| ’Tis thine, fair Thetis, the command to lay, | |
| And Vulcan’s joy and duty to obey. |
1805. M. G. Lewis, Rugantino, I. v. As you are to be the goddess Thetis, I mean to be one of your Syrens.
1840. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Ser. I. Witches’ Frolic, 87. If … he laid his head In Thetis’s lap beneath the seas.
2. Astron. Name of the seventeenth asteroid.
Hence † Thetisie, obs. nonce-wd., the abode of Thetis and the Nereids; the watery realm.
1600. Tourneur, Transf. Metam., xl. The Treasure-house of Neptune’s Thetisie. Ibid., lxxiv. When fatall Neptune … hal’d him to his Thetisie.
