Ionic

ī-on′ik, adj. relating to Ionia in Greece: denoting an order in architecture distinguished by the ram's-horn volute of its capital—also Iō′nian .— vs.t. Ion′icize , I′onize .— ns. I′onism ; I′onist .— Ionic dialect , the most important of the three main branches of the ancient Greek language (Ionic, Doric, Æolic), marked by greater softne and smoothne , the effect of its rich vowel system. Homer's Iliad is written in Old , the history of Hero dot us in New Ionic: the Attic of Thucydides and Sophocles is its later form; Ionic mode (see Mode ); Ionic school , a name given to the representative philosophers of the Ionian Greeks, such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Her a clit us, Anaxagoras, who debated the question what was the primordial constitutive principle of the cosmical universe.