cyclopean
adjUK /ˈsaɪkləʊpi.ən/
Etymology From cyclops + -ean.
1
Human sciences, Mysticism, Mythology, Philosophy, Sciences Suggestive of a cyclops.
- Some of the descendants of this cyclopean ancestor left their burrows and started to swim.2026 February 23, Carl Zimmer, “The Rise of Eyes Began With Just One. Even Charles Darwin was puzzled by the evolution of the vertebrate eye. New research suggests that it traces back to a cyclopean invertebrate with a single eye atop the head”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 24 Feb 2026:
2
Business, Construction, Manufacturing, Masonry Fitted together of huge irregular stones.
3
Broadly Massive in stature.
- 2006, Fernando Pessoa, "Salutation to Walt Whitman," in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems, edited and translated by Richard Zenith, Penguin, pp. 198-9, You were cyclopean and muscular, not pretty, / Yet your attitude toward the world was feminine, / And for you each leaf of grass, each stone and each man was the Universe. See also quotation under cyclopian.
4
Of an image Created by combining two images.
- When he wrote the word, / the o's were joined / like eyeglass lenses without / a bridge. Cross-eyed, hypnotic, / they threatened to merge, / become Cyclopean. […]2001, Sharan Strange, “Looking”, in Ash, Boston: Beacon Press, page 50:
- Derived terms
- Cyclopean architecture, cyclopean stairs, hypercyclopean