Chapter Pharsalia to Philosopher's Stone of P by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Philippic A severe scolding; an invective. So called from the orations of Demosthenes against Philip of Macedon, to rouse the Athenians to resist his encroachments. The orations of Cicero against Anthony are called “Philippics.”

Philippins A Russian sect: so called from the founder, Philip Pustoswiät. They are called Old Faith Men, because they cling with tenacity to the old service books, old version of the Bible, old hymn-book, old prayer-book, and all customs previous to the reforms of Nekon, in the 17th century.

Philips (John);author of The Splendid Shilling, wrote a georgic on Cider in blank verse- a serious poem modelled upon Milton's epics.

“Philips, Pomona's bard, the second thou
Who nobly durst, in rhyme-unfettered verse.
With British freedom sing the British song.”
Thomson: Autumn.

Philisides (4 syl.). Philip Sidney (Phili' Sid). Spenser uses the word in the Pastoral Æglogue on the Death of Sir Philip.

“Philisides is dead.”

Philistines meaning the ill-behaved and ignorant. The word so applied arose in Germany from the Charlies or Philisters, who were in everlasting collision with the students; and in these “town and gown rows” identified themselves with the town, called in our universities “the snobs.” Matthew Arnold, in the Cornhill Magazine, applied the term Philistine to the middle class, which he says is “ignorant, narrow-minded, and deficient in great ideas,” insomuch that the middle-class English are objects of contempt in the eyes of foreigners.

Philistines (3 syl.). Earwigs and other insect tormentors are so called in Norfolk. Bailiffs, constables, etc. “The Philistines are upon thee, Samson” (Judges xvi.).

Philistinism A cynical indifference and supercilious sneering at religion. The allusion is to the Philistines of Palestine.

Phillis A play written in Spanish by Lupercio Leonardo of Argensola. (See Don Quixote, vol. iii. p. 70.)

Philoclea in Sidney's Arcadia, is Lady Penelope Devereux, with whom he was in love; but the lady married another, and Sir Philip transferred his affections to Frances, eldest daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham.

Philoctetes The most famous archer in the Trojan war, to whom Hercules, at death, gave his arrows. He joined the allied Greeks, with seven ships, but in the island of Lemnos, his foot being bitten by a serpent, ulcerated, and became so offensive that the Greeks left him behind. In the tenth year of the siege Ulysses commanded that he should be sent for, as an oracle had declared that Troy could not be taken without the arrows of Hercules. Philoctetes accordingly went to Troy, slew Paris, and Troy fell.
    The Philoctetes of Sophocles is one of the most famous Greek tragedies. Laharpe wrote a French tragedy, and Warren, in 1871, a metrical drama on the same subject.

Philomel or Philomela. (See Nightingale .)

Philomelus The Druid bard that accompanied Sir Industry to the Castle of Indolence. (Thomson, canto ii. 34.)

Philopoemen, general of the Achæan league, made Epaminondas his model. He slew Mechanidas, tyrant of Sparta, and was himself killed by poison.

Philosopher The sages of Greece used to be called sophoi (wise men), but Pythagoras thought the word too arrogant, and adopted the compound philosophoi (lover of wisdom), whence “philosopher,” one who courts or loves wisdom.
   Philosopher. “There was never yet philosopher who could endure the toothache patiently, however they have writ the style of gods, and made a push at chance and sufferance.” (Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing, v. 1.)
   The Philosopher. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus is so called by Justin Martyr. (121, 161-180.)
   Leo VI., Emperor of the East. (866, 886-911.)
   Porphyry, the Antichristian.