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Word for collective followers of Sisyphus

English Language & Usage Asked by packetpacket on July 16, 2021

I am looking for a single word to describe the group of followers of Sisyphus (or generally any Greek name ending in ‘-phus’). I am unsure of how to modify the word to achieve this.

Possible guesses: Sisypheans, Sisyphees, Sisyphians.

Example sentence: "Despite their differences, the men were all ____"

Related: The word ‘sisyphean’ is used to describe an endless or immensley repetitive task, so ‘Sisypheans’ might be ambiguous as used to describe the followers of Sisyphus.

Relevant research: The OED lists both ‘sisyphean’ and ‘sisyphian’ but none of the examples use the word to mean ‘people/followers of Sisyphus’. Further, search results for ‘sisypheans’ yields only references to an album with that name.

The word ‘Sisyphians’ is used in the Marie Belloc Lowndes 1904 novel "The Heart of Penelope", Chapter II:

"Mr. Gumberg hesitated; words
sometimes failed him, but never for long-‘all I can say is he was
the first of those I was the first to dub the Sisyphians … // … Those for whom I invented the name of Sisyphians-there are
plenty of ’em about now—well, i divide ’em into two sets, both, I
need hardly say, equally distasteful to me. The one kind cultivates
platonic friendships with the women’-Mr. Gumberg made a slight
grimace."

In this example, ‘Sisyphians’ is a fictional name given to these people due to their actions relating to or resembling those of Sisyphus, but not as followers of Sisyphus. I am unsure of whether there is any way English meaningfully distinguishes between the two via suffixes.

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