Learn the English definition and meaning of Phoenix with examples, pronunciation, and translations to enhance your vocabulary. Phoenix can mean an imaginary bird that rose from its ashes, or the capital of Arizona. Learn more about the word, its origin, and its usage with examples and translations. Sometimes Phoenix a mythical bird of great beauty fabled to live 500 or 600 years in the Arabian wilderness, to burn itself on a funeral pyre, and to rise from its ashes in the freshness of youth and live through another cycle of years: often an emblem of immortality or of reborn idealism or hope. The phoenix ’s rising meaning is to emerge from a catastrophe stronger, smarter, and more powerful. A new phoenix rises from the ashes of its dead predecessor.