phoenix

Etymology

From Old English and Old French fenix, from Medieval Latin phenix, from Latin phoenīx, from Ancient Greek φοῖνιξ (phoînix), from Egyptian bnw (boinu, “grey heron”). 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.

noun

1. (mythology) A mythological bird, said to be the only one of its kind, which lives for 500 years and then dies by burning to ashes on a pyre of its own making, ignited by the sun. It then arises anew from the ashes.
2. (figurative) Anything that is reborn after apparently being destroyed.
   Astronomers believe planets might form in this dead star's disk, like the mythical Phoenix rising up out of the ashes.
   Many of the legitimate nightclubs of today sprang like legalized phoenixes from the still-hot ashes of the speakeasies of prohibition days. 1946, George Johnston, Skyscrapers in the Mist, page 90
3. (Chinese mythology) A mythological Chinese chimerical bird whose physical body symbolizes the six celestial bodies; a fenghuang.
4. (historical) A Greek silver coin used briefly from 1828 to 1832, divided into 100 lepta.
   The national currency, the phoenix, which had been established by Kapodistrias, was renamed after an ancient Greek coin, the drachma. 2019, Roderick Beaton, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation, Penguin, published 2020, page 116
5. (obsolete) A marvelous person or thing.

verb

1. (Australia) To transfer assets from one company to another to dodge liability
   Australian Restructuring Insolvency and Turnaround Association CEO John Winter said phoenixing has been "endemic" for decades. 2019-12-17, Noel Gladstone, Carrie Fellner, “Small business flattened by 'dodgy' builders in phoenixing epidemic”, in The Sydney Morning Herald
   The ATO defines iIllegal phoenixing as when a new company is created to continue the business of a company that has been deliberately liquidated to avoid paying its debts, including taxes, creditors and employee entitlements. 2020-09-24, Anne Davies, “Phoenixing: how unscrupulous dealers rise debt-free from the ashes of failed companies”, in The Sydney Morning Herald