herm

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

noun a statue consisting of a squared stone pillar with a carved head (usually a bearded Hermes) on top; used in ancient Greece as a boundary marker or signpost

Learned borrowing from Latin Herma, a Latinization of Hermēs, from Ancient Greek Ἑρμῆς (Hermês).

Where Herm Belonged to Be. — The best short stories of 1917, and the yearbook of the American short story, Unknown
Various names were given these statuettes: Marsyae, Satyri, Atlantes, Hermae, Chirones, Silani, Tulii.” No one who has been through the Secret Museum at Naples will find much difficulty in recalling a few of these heavily endowed examples to mind, and our author, in choosing Marsyae, adds a touch of sarcastic realism, for statues of Marysas were often set up in free cities, symbolical, as it were, of freedom. — The Satyricon — Complete, Petronius Arbiter
You may take my word for’t, this place is just such another as, to my knowledge, formerly were the islands of Sark and Herm, between the smaller and the greater Britain; such as was the Poneropolis of Philip in Thrace; islands of thieves, banditti, picaroons, robbers, ruffians, and murderers, worse than raw-head and bloody-bones, and full as honest as the senior fellows of the college of iniquity, the very outcasts of the county gaol’s common-side. — Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais

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