Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Greek Mythology The hero of Homer's Iliad, the son of Peleus and Thetis and slayer of Hector.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. An argument, otherwise called ‘Achilles and the Tortoise,’ which was proposed by Zeno of Elea to prove that motion is impossible. Suppose that Achilles runs parallel to the tortoise, which is moving slowly in the same direction and is at the start some distance ahead of Achilles. The argument is that Achilles never will overtake the tortoise, because in order to do so he must first move to the point at which the tortoise started, and when he arrives there the tortoise will again be a certain distance ahead and the same condition of things will be repeated. Hence Achilles will not overtake the tortoise until he has completed or ended a series of advances which has no completion or end. The argument is absurd from both the logical and the mathematical point of view.
Wiktionary
- n. Greek mythology semi-divine hero, son of Peleus and the nymph Thetis, prince and leader of the Myrmidons; great warrior of the Achaean (Greek) camp, killed in the Trojan War; central character of the Iliad.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. a mythical Greek hero of the Iliad; a foremost Greek warrior at the seige of Troy.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a mythical Greek hero of the Iliad; a foremost Greek warrior at the siege of Troy; when he was a baby his mother tried to make him immortal by bathing him in a magical river but the heel by which she held him remained vulnerable--his `Achilles' heel'
Etymologies
- From Latin Achilles, from Ancient Greek Ἀχιλλεύς (Akhilleus). (Wiktionary)
Examples
“ARTEMIS AND ACHILLES when Achilles was still a puppy and being trained by ultra-Zen Artemis on how to live with cats:”
“The Achilles 'heel of American corporate fascism is BOYCOTTS, BOYCOTTS, & MORE BOYCOTTS yahooBuzzArticleHeadline =' The Achilles\ 'heel of American corporate fascism is BOYCOTTS, BOYCOTTS, & MORE BOYCOTTS'; yahooBuzzArticleSummary = 'Article: The number one unplayed card in the American progressive social/political deck is nation wide, internet-orchestrated, targeted corporate boycotts.”
The Achilles' heel of American corporate fascism is BOYCOTTS, BOYCOTTS, & MORE BOYCOTTS
“The Iraq War: Hillary Clinton's Achilles 'Heel? yahooBuzzArticleHeadline =' The Iraq War: Hillary Clinton\'s Achilles\ 'Heel?”
“Well, seeing how the term Achilles Heel is defined by Wikipedia as a fatal weakness in spite of overall strength, actually or potentially leading to downfall, I'd have to say no, or not that I've found yet.”
“Fell back to energy every time she got a question that she couldn't handle, apparently does not understand the term Achilles heel.”
“This is one of the first and largest studies so far where they are targeting what I call the Achilles heel of cancers," he said Monday from Vancouver.”
“Some have said that Malvolios treatment borders on cruel and I admit Brown is now so pathetic it is becoming hard to watch … then again Achilles whose sulking in his tent and obsession with his servant is played for laughs in Troilus and Cressida.”
“Why didn't any of the Trojans build something to hit Achilles from a safe distance while he was posturing out on the plain?”
“` ` That's our main Achilles 'heel right now,' 'Bosh said.”
“According to Jonathan Shay in Achilles in Vietnam, a book about Vietnam veterans suffering from PTSD, “Severe trauma explodes the cohesion of consciousness.””
Responding to Violent Poems in the Classroom : Emily Warn : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘Achilles’.
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LIT - Greco-Latin gods and heroes
Phaeton, Metis, Lachesis, Juventas, Hestia, Hellen, Gaia, Clotho, Cadmus, Atropos, Athena, Mnemosyne and 198 more...
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LIT - Odyssey - key words and phrases
Key words of the Odyssey by Homer in English including all those famous repeating epitethons like
"bright-eyed Athene"
"wine-dark sea"
"rosy-fingered dawn"
"long suf...yearling, wild celery, Wain, Themis, talon, slither, sedge, sea eagle, scurf, rile, prevaricate, poplar tree and 732 more...
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LIT - Iliad - key words and protagonists
abduct, abducting, abductor, Achaea, Achaean, Achilles, advise, Aegean, Aegean Sea, Aegina, aegis, Aeneas and 713 more...
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Doctor Faustus
Various words from the play by Christopher Marlowe.
Good Angel, Bad Angel, pride, covetousness, envy, wrath, gluttony, sloth, lechery, vintner, horse-courser, Helen of Troy and 148 more...
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Wordlist-1
Important words
atrabilious, allege, anxiety, architecture, ambitious, anxiously, albeit, accommodate, anonymity, amateur, apprehension, aire and 130 more...
Tweets
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