Old English and Old French fenix, from Medieval Latin phenix, from Latin phoenix, from Greek phoinix, mythical bird of Arabia which flew to Egypt every 500 years to be reborn, also "the date" (fruit and tree), also "Phoenician," literally "purple-red," perhaps a foreign word (Egyptian has been suggested), or from phoinos "blood-red." Exact relation and order of the senses in Greek is unclear.
Ðone wudu weardaþ wundrum fægerSpelling assimilated to Greek 16c. (see ph). Figurative sense of "that which rises from the ashes of what was destroyed" is attested from 1590s. The city in Arizona, U.S., so called because it was founded in 1867 on the site of an ancient Native American settlement.
fugel feþrum se is fenix hatan
["Phoenix," c.900]
1861, originally as the name of a breakaway Confederate region of southern New Mexico; organized roughly along modern lines as a U.S. territory in 1863. From Spanish Arizonac, probably from a local name among the O'odham (Piman) people meaning "having a little spring." Alternative theory is that it derives from Basque arizonak "good oaks."
A mythical bird that periodically burned itself to death and emerged from the ashes as a new phoenix. According to most stories, the rebirth of the phoenix happened every five hundred years. Only one phoenix lived at a time.
Note: To “rise like a phoenix from the ashes” is to overcome a seemingly insurmountable setback.
State in the southwestern United States bordered by Utah to the north, New Mexico to the east, Mexico to the south, and California and Nevada to the west. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix.
Note: The Grand Canyon is in northwestern Arizona.