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say it: PIR-ik
pyrrhic is an adjective and noun meaning "of or relating to a war dance of ancient Greece". It is pronounced /ˈpɪɹɪk/ — PIR-ik. It carries 5 recorded senses.
of or relating to a war dance of ancient Greece
“pyrrhic dance movements”
of or relating to or containing a metrical foot of two unstressed syllables
“pyrrhic verses”
of or relating to or resembling Pyrrhus or his exploits (especially his sustaining staggering losses in order to defeat the Romans)
“a Pyrrhic victory”
a metrical unit with unstressed-unstressed syllables
an ancient Greek dance imitating the motions of warfare
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for pyrrhic come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.