/ · 1894 Brewer’s · X · Xantippe or Xanthippe
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Wife of the philosopher Socratēs. Her bad temper has rendered her name proverbial for a conjugal scold.
“Be she as foul as was Florentiusʹ love,
As old as Sibyl, and as curst and shrewd
As Socratesʹ Xanthippe, or a worse,
She moves me not.”
Shakespeare: Taming of the Shrew, i. 2.
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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