A.Word.A.Day--goliath

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Dec 13, 2019

This week’s theme
Biblical allusions

This week’s words
corbie messenger
land of nod
Apollyon
Magdalene
goliath

David and Goliath
Goliathhaus, Regensburg, Germany

Photo: Koppi2/Wikimedia

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

goliath

PRONUNCIATION:

(guh-LY-uhth)

MEANING:

noun: A giant; a person or organization of enormous size or power.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Goliath, a giant Philistine warrior, who was slain by David using a sling and a stone. Earliest documented use: 1607.

NOTES:

“David and Goliath” has become a metaphor for an underdog facing a much larger, powerful opponent, in sports, business, politics, and beyond.

USAGE:

“Amazon’s ‘second headquarters’ may be no such thing. Not for the first time, The Onion, a satirical website, got it right. ‘You are all inside Amazon’s second headquarters,’ Jeff Bezos announces to horrified Americans as massive dome envelops nation. That headline captured both the American e-commerce goliath’s endless expansion in recent years and the stratospheric level of hype around its quest to find a second headquarters.”
HQ2 times 2; The Economist (London, UK); Nov 10, 2018.

See more usage examples of goliath in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

The walls of books around me, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters. -Ross Macdonald, novelist (13 Dec 1915-1983)

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