Caliban

noun

Cal·​i·​ban ˈka-lə-ˌban How to pronounce Caliban (audio)
: a savage and deformed slave in Shakespeare's The Tempest

Examples of Caliban in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web That book, Caliban and the Witch, traces the emergence of witch hunts throughout medieval Western Europe amid the transition from serfdom to proto-capitalism. Hazlitt, 4 Sep. 2024 Enlarge / Ariel and Caliban learned as kittens that scratching posts were fair game for their natural claw-sharpening instincts. Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 3 July 2024 The plot, which encompasses a magic shipwreck, two revolutionary subplots (one involving a half-human creature named Caliban), and a love story out of a fairy tale, springs from a medium of pure imagination. Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times, 10 July 2023 But as one of us (Federici) has argued in her 2004 book Caliban and the Witch and subsequent publications, what sustained periods of witch-hunting have in common, across time, space and culture, is a backdrop of social and economic dislocation. Silvia Federici, Scientific American, 17 Apr. 2023 And Caliban, who wished Prospero might be stricken with the red plague for teaching him to speak correct English, never told anything but the truth, presumably not knowing how to. Matt Seaton, The New York Review of Books, 30 Mar. 2023 Without human intervention, the situation can escalate into truly antagonistic behavior on the part of the cat (Ariel) who is disinclined to continue playing—growling, hissing, running away—with the other cat (Caliban) in hot pursuit, thinking this is all still part of their game. Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 31 Jan. 2023 Yet Fitzgerald identifies a contradiction: Prospero will inform, Ariel will entertain, but Caliban is to be educated—two active figures and one passive. Matt Seaton, The New York Review of Books, 30 Mar. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'Caliban.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

circa 1616, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of Caliban was circa 1616

Dictionary Entries Near Caliban

Cite this Entry

“Caliban.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Caliban. Accessed 31 Oct. 2024.

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