Epithet

An epithet (from Greek epítheton, "adjective," from epíthetos, "additional") is "a descriptive term (word or phrase) commonly accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a real or fictitious person, place, or thing": Alexander the Great, Richard the Lionheart, Æthelred the Unready. The tradition is Homeric: "swift-footed" Achilles and "rosy-fingered" Eos served the meter and worked as "mnemonic aids to the singer and the audience alike," and Achilles is not called "swift-footed" only when he runs, the epithet marking "a quality that does not change." A separate modern sense is pejorative: "an abusive, defamatory, or derogatory word or phrase."

For the novelist an epithet is characterization compressed into a handle, a fixed tag for a recurring figure; comic books keep the habit, Superman as "The Man of Steel." The craft risk is wear: a stock epithet repeated without variation hardens into cliché, so choose and vary them as deliberately as character names.