AM’INE (3 syl.) or AM’INES (3 syl.), the beautiful wife of Sidi Nouman.  Instead of eating her rice with a spoon, she used a bodkin for the purpose, and carried it to her mouth in infinitesimal portions.  This went on for some time, till Sidi Nouman determined to ascertain on what his wife really fed, and to his horror discovered that she was a ghoul, who went stealthily by night to the cemetery, and feasted on the freshly-buried dead.—­Arabian Nights ("History of Sidi Nouman").

  One of the Amines’ sort, who pick up their
  grains of food with a bodkin.—­O.W.  Holmes,
  Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table.

AMIN’TOR, a young nobleman, the troth-plight husband of Aspatia, but by the king’s command he marries Evad’ne (3 syl.).  This is the great event of the tragedy of which Amintor is the hero.  The sad story of Evadne, the heroine, gives name to the play.—­Beaumont and Fletcher, The Maid’s Tragedy (1610).

(Till the reign of Charles II., the kings of England claimed the feudal right of disposing in marriage any one who owed them feudal allegiance.  In All’s Well that Ends Well, Shakespeare makes the king of France exercise a similar right, when he commands Bertram, count of Rousillon, to marry against his will Hel’ena, the physician’s daughter.)

AMIS THE PRIEST, the hero of a comic German epic of the 13th century, represented as an Englishman, a man of great wit and humor, but ignorant and hypocritical.  His popularity excites the envy of the superior clergy, who seek to depose him from the priesthood by making public exposition of his ignorance, but by his quickness at repartee he always manages to turn the laugh against them.—­Ascribed to Stricker of Austria.

AM’LET (Richard), the gamester in Vanbrugh’s Confederacy (1695).  He is usually called “Dick.”

I saw Miss Pope for the second time, in the year 1790, in the character of “Flippanta,” John Palmer being “Dick Amlet,” and Mrs. Jordan “Corinna.”—­James Smith.

Mrs. Amlet, a rich, vulgar tradeswoman, mother of Dick, of whom she is very proud, although she calls him a “sad scapegrace,” and swears “he will be hanged.”  At last she settles on him L10,000, and he marries Corinna, daughter of Gripe the rich scrivener.

AMMO’NIAN HORN (The), the cornucopia.  Ammon king of Lib’ya gave to his mistress Amalthe’a (mother of Bacchus) a tract of land resembling a ram’s horn in shape, and hence called the “Ammonian horn” (from the giver), the “Amalthe’an horn” (from the receiver), and the “Hesperian horn” (from its locality).  Amalthea also personifies fertility. (Ammon is Ham, son of Noah, founder of the African race.) (See AMALTHEA.)

  [Here] Amalthea pours,
  Well pleased, the wealth of that Ammonian horn,
  Her dower.  Akenside, Hymn to the Naiads.

AM’MON’S SON.  Alexander the Great called himself the son of the god Ammon, but others call him the son of Philip of Macedon.