Other forms: phoenixes
The phoenix is a bird of myth that burns to ashes and is reborn from them. Rise like a phoenix, a phoenix from the ashes.
There is only ever one at a time in the legend, which is why it takes the definite article. The figurative use is common and always about recovery: a company, a career or a city rising from the ashes. Note the spelling, which is a reliable trap — ph, oe, and an x — and the pronunciation, FEE-nix, two syllables. The plural is phoenixes. Phoenix is also a city in Arizona, named for a settlement built on older ruins.
1nounphoenixA mythical bird that burns and is reborn from its ashes.
“The phoenix appears in Greek, Egyptian and Chinese traditions.”
2nounrecoversSomebody or something that recovers after being destroyed.
“The club rose like a phoenix after the collapse.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
phoenix is a mythical bird.
Greek phoinix meant both the bird and the colour purple-red, and also a Phoenician — the people who traded in purple dye. Whether the bird was named for the colour of its fire or for the east it came from is still argued about.
Ancient Greek
φοῖνιξ
Latin
phoenīx
Medieval Latin
phenix
Old French
fenix
English, today
phoenix
From Old English - and Old French fenix, from Medieval Latin phenix, from Latin phoenīx, from Ancient Greek φοῖνιξ, from egy bnw (“grey heron”). a doublet of Bennu. The grey heron was venerated at Heliopolis and associated in Egypt with the cyclical renewal of life because the bird rises in flight at dawn and migrates back every year in the flood season to inhabit the Nile waters.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA