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Dec 13, 2019
This week’s themeBiblical allusions This week’s words corbie messenger land of nod Apollyon Magdalene goliath
David and Goliath
Goliathhaus, Regensburg, Germany Photo: Koppi2/Wikimedia This week’s comments AWADmail 911 Next week’s theme Adverb? Not! A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garggoliath
PRONUNCIATION:
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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