from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
An island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea south of Turkey. Site of an ancient Neolithic culture, the island was settled by Phoenicians c. 800 BC and thereafter fell successively to the Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Macedonian Greeks, and finally Romans (58 BC). The Byzantines controlled it from AD 395 until 1191, when it was captured by Richard I of England during the Third Crusade. Venice annexed it in 1489, Turkey conquered it in 1571, and Great Britain annexed it in 1914. Cyprus became independent in 1960, but large-scale fighting between Greek and Turkish Cypriots led to the installment of a UN peacekeeping force in 1964. In 1974 Turkey invaded Cyprus and established a de facto independent Turkish state in the northern part of the island. Nicosia is the capital of Cyprus and the largest city.
from The Century Dictionary.
noun The Latin name of a tree, Lawsonia alba, the common henna, growing in Cyprus and Egypt, yielding a fragrant oil.
noun Same as cypress.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun obsolete A thin, transparent stuff, the same as, or corresponding to, crape. It was either white or black, the latter being most common, and used for mourning.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
proper noun Country between Europe and the Middle East, in the Mediterranean Sea. Member state of the European Union since 2004. Official name: Republic of Cyprus.
proper noun Island between Europe and the Middle East, in the Mediterranean Sea.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun a country on the island of Cyprus; 80% of the people are of Greek origin and 20% or Turkish origin
noun an island in the eastern Mediterranean
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Via Latin Cyprus, from Ancient Greek Κύπρος (Kupros).
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Examples
Associated Press CYPRUS SUNSET: People walk on the beach Monday during a sunset at Petra tou Romiou, Cyprus, the legendary birthplace of the Greek goddess Aphrodite.
There was also a lack of information inside the EU about what was really going on in Cyprus, but I feel that even if (as I do) EU officials had had subscriptions to the daily headlines from the Cypriot press, that still wouldn't have provided the necessary motivation.
I was eight years old, we were living in Cyprus, and my mom had this computer that was very old and just enormous and heavy and I was playing around with it and I ended up writing a two paragraph story about a goat.
I'm just back from a few days of work in Cyprus, but decided to take yesterday exploring the Karpass peninsula, the long thin panhandle of the northeast of the island.
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