Sibylline is an adjective. According to
Wiktionary, it has 3 related meanings:
- Of or pertaining to a sibyl or female oracle, especially the Cumaean Sibyl and the Sibylline Books.
- (by extension) Having oracle-like predicting powers, clairvoyant.
- mysterious
Sibylline is a very rare word. According to
Google n-gram viewer, it is about 1 in every 30,000,000 words. Even its root word,
sibyl is used only about twice as often. But I think its a very useful word. It's second meaning, in particular, seems not to match any other word. Oracular has a sort of negative connotation - it seems to imply that the predictive powers are false.
According to the
online etymology dictionary, sibylline has been around in English for over 400 years and sibyl is much older - from around 1200 AD. It comes from Greek
Sybilla, who were prophetesses in ancient Greece, via Latin and old French.
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