Æneid, iv. 118, 119.
A maiden queen that shone at Titan’s ray.
Spenser, Faëry Queen, i. 4 (1590).
Titans, giants, sons of Heaven and Earth. Their names were Ocēănos, Kœos, Krios, Hyperīon, Iapĕtos, and Kronos.
The Titanĭdês were Theia [Thi-a], Rhea, Themis, Mnemosynê, Phœbê, and Tethys.
Titan´ia, queen of the fairies, and wife of Obĕron. Oberon wanted her to give him for a page a little changeling, but Titania refused to part with him, and this led to a fairy quarrel. Oberon, in revenge, anointed the eyes of Titania, during sleep, with an extract of “Love in Idleness,” the effect of which was to make her fall in love with the first object she saw on waking. The first object Titania set eyes on happened to be a country bumpkin, whom Puck had dressed up with an ass’s head. While Titania was fondling this unamiable creature, Oberon came upon her, sprinkled on her an antidote, and Titania, thoroughly ashamed of herself, gave up the boy to her spouse; after which a reconciliation took place between the willful fairies.--Shakespeare, Midsummer Night’s Dream (1592).
Tite Barnacle (Mr.), head of the Circumlocution Office, and a very great man in his own opinion. The family had intermarried with the Stiltstalkings, and the Barnacles and Stiltstalkings found berths pretty readily in the national workshop, where brains and conceit were in inverse ratio. The young gents in the office usually spoke with an eye-glass in the eye, in this sort of style: “Oh, I say; look here! Can’t attend to you to-day, you know. But look here! I say; can’t you call to-morrow?” “No.” “Well, but I say; look here! Is this public business?--anything about--tonnage--or that sort of thing?” Having made his case understood, Mr. Clennam received the following instructions in these words;--
You must find out all about it. Then you’ll memorialize the department, according to the regular forms for leave to memorialize. If you get it, the memorial must be entered in that department, sent to be registered in this department, then sent back to that department, then sent to this department to be countersigned, and then it will be brought regularly before that department. You’ll find out when the business passes through each of these stages by inquiring at both departments till they tell you.--C. Dickens, Little Dorrit, x (1857).
Tite Poulette, daughter (supposed) of a quadroon mother. “She lives a lonely, innocent life, in the midst of corruption, like the lilies in the marshes.... If she were in Holland to-day, not one of a hundred suitors would detect the hidden blemish of mixed blood.” When the young man, who thus describes her loves her, Lalli, her putative mother confesses: “I have robbed God long enough. Here are the sworn papers. Take her--she is as white as snow--so!... I never had a child. She is the Spaniard’s daughter.”--G. W. Cable, Old Creole Days (1879).
Titho´nus, a son of Laomedon, king of Troy. He was so handsome that Auro´ra became enamored of him, and persuaded Jupiter to make him immortal; but as she forgot to ask for eternal youth also, he became decrepit and ugly, and Aurora changed him into a cicada, or grasshopper. His name is a synonym for a very old man.