: a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune
his odyssey from rural South to urban North, from poverty to affluence, from Afro-American folk culture to a Eurocentric world of books J. E. Wideman
2
: an intellectual or spiritual wandering or quest
an odyssey of self-discovery
a spiritual odyssey from disbelief to faith
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Odysseus, the hero of Homer's Odyssey, spends 20 years traveling home from the Trojan War. He has astonishing adventures and learns a great deal about himself and the world; he even descends to the underworld to talk to the dead. Thus, an odyssey is any long, complicated journey, often a quest for a goal, and may be a spiritual or psychological journey as well as an actual voyage.
Example Sentences
The story is about the emotional odyssey experienced by a teenage girl. the spiritual odyssey of the deeply religious
Recent Examples on the WebBut in a way, the odyssey to get to this point has been even more arduous - an at-times painful path that shows how Washington works, and, ironically, why NASA has been unable to return to the moon since the last of the Apollo missions 50 years ago.BostonGlobe.com, 27 Aug. 2022 His professional odyssey was mostly on buses through baseball’s hinterlands. John Maffei, San Diego Union-Tribune, 15 Aug. 2022 But the bus broke down, turning the trip into a two-day odyssey. Jonathan Edwards, Washington Post, 8 June 2022 Pugh’s odyssey has been long and arduous, but the path toward self-discovery has been a revelation. Patrick Z. Mcgavin, Chicago Tribune, 30 Aug. 2022 Landis was 9, and that was the beginning of an odyssey that had Cochran meeting with the young baseball enthusiast once every month or two for the next eight years. Diane Bellcolumnist, San Diego Union-Tribune, 12 July 2022 The book becomes a kind of odyssey, with Sergeyich, driving his trusty old Lada, in the role of a Ukrainian Odysseus. Keith Gessen, The New Yorker, 18 Apr. 2022 Billy McKinney and Chad Pinder joined the A’s system in the same 2013 draft and roomed together playing for High-A Stockton the following year before McKinney began a baseball odyssey. Matt Kawahara, San Francisco Chronicle, 20 Mar. 2022 Mahuchikh and Stepanova, her coach, left on their March odyssey to Belgrade carrying a digital letter from Ukraine’s track and field federation, explaining their reason for leaving the country.New York Times, 15 July 2022 See More
Word History
Etymology
the Odyssey, epic poem attributed to Homer recounting the long wanderings of Odysseus