venus

The second planet in the Solar system.

Near-synonyms: morning star, Phosphorus, Eosphorus, Lucifer; evening star, Vesper, Hesperus

Venus rises on the 1st day 1/4 to 5 a.m., and 4h. 25m. a.m. on the last day. […] She is now beginning to move northward.

The goddess of love, beauty, fertility, and sexuality.

Of all the classic Venuses known to us in modern times, this Venus of Milo is certainly the most popular.

To call either or both of them by the name of Venus seems to me too positive; for although the theory of love which they embody was unquestionably associated with the two Venuses in Plato, ‘one draped, the other nude’, it is important to observe that, in contradistinction to Botticelli and Mantegna, Titian endowed the figures with attributes and characters which transcend the mythological idiom.

A female given name.

A mirrored [Venus] Williams, shown from behind and in profile, wears a tennis skirt made of raffia and the Wimbledon trophy dish refashioned as a collared chestplate apropos for a warrior superhero. […] Pruitt sees “a fertile space of reflection” between his two Venuses. “My hope,” he said, “is that the duality of the portrait gives us this sense of a person looking back at themselves, considering where they came from and where they’re going.”

Sexual activity or intercourse; sex; lust, love.

Immoderate Venus in excess, as it is a cause, or in defect; so, moderately used, to some parties an only help, a present remedy.

Copper (a reddish-brown, malleable, ductile metallic element).

CRYSTALS of Venus or of copper, called also vitriol of Venus, is copper reduced into the form of vitriol by spirit of nitre, or by dissolving verdegris in good distilled vinegar, till the acid be saturated; it is very caustic and used to eat off proud flesh. It is also used by painters, and manufacturers, and sold under the name of distilled vinegar. See CHEMISTRY.

Another pair of terms which caused some confusion were Spirit of Saturn and Spirit of Venus, names suggesting compounds of lead and copper respectively. Jean Beguin described the preparation from minium and distilled vinegar of a liquid he called burning spirit of Saturn, because it was inflammable and he thought it was a compound of lead. Actually the lead takes no part in the reaction and the product of distilling lead acetate is impure acetone. Beguin’s terminology did not go without comment however, for Christopher Glaser later referred to ‘A burning Spirit of Saturn (as it is called) but rather, a Spirit of the Volatile Salt of Vinegar’. Tachenius referred to the product of distillation of copper acetate as ‘pretended spirit of Venus’ because it was really only distilled vinegar - the meaning which Macquer gave to the expression. It is typical of the confusion of terminology in early chemistry that the London Pharmacopoeia of 1721 gave the name Spiritus Veneris to sulphuric acid obtained by the distillation of copper sulphate.

Any depiction of an idealized or erotic figure of a nude woman, especially one in a mythological setting.

Their figures are universally models for brunette Venuses, and their feet arched like rainbows, and Cinderellan in size.

Any Upper Palaeolithic statuette portraying a woman, usually carved in the round.

While the goddess statues obviously did function in a very public, domestic context, there is no evidence that they were androgynyous or that they were the primary cult of importance. There are probably just as many phalli in the Paleolithic as there are Venuses.

However, a number of well-crafted studies in recent years have forcefully questioned—and perhaps refuted—the view that the Venuses were simply or solely goddesses.

Any of the bivalve molluscs in the genus Venus or family Veneridae.