Xantipʹpe or Xanthipʹpe (3 syl.)

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.”

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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.