Skip to main content

Mythological Origins - Achilles Heel

The meaning for Achilles Heel is literally related to the heel of Achilles, which lead to his death. First let's know a little about Achilles, the Greek hero.

In Greek mythology, it's believed that when Achilles was a baby, his mother dipped him in the River Styx holding him by the heel. Since the river had miraculous powers, Achilles' whole body turned powerful and invincible; except for the heel which was held by his mother and so did not get dipped in the waters. His heel turned out to be the most vulnerable / weakest part in his body, despite him being the strongest warrior.

During the time of Trojan War (not exactly in the war), Achilles, the strongest warrior was killed by a fatal wound to his heel by Paris's arrow (probably poisoned).

So Achilles heel means a weakness or a vulnerable part.

Now, if you want to know a little more about the story of the Trojan War & why exactly Achilles was not killed in the war - Here it goes:


Achilles killed Hector (a Trojan prince) but even after killing, he does not return the body. Instead tied Hector's body to his chariot and dragged it around the battlefield for nine days. Finally, there was a divine intervention by two messengers and he agrees to return the body to Priam (King of Troy, Hector's father) for a heavy ransom to perform the funeral rites. After this, Paris (Hector's brother, Priam's son), who was unskilled and cowardly wounded Achilles' heel with an arrow from behind.

~ ~ ~
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ambidextrous Vs. Ambisinister

Quite difficult looking words….aren’t they? Let’s start with ‘Ambi’ , which is common between the two words – Ambi is not a word but a root which means ‘both’ or ‘both sides’ . ‘Ambidextrous’ is someone who is skillful in using both the right and left hand equally well. Similarly, ‘Ambisinister’ is someone who is clumsy or unskillful with both the hands.
12 comments
Read more

English borrowed the word ‘Market’ from Kannada Language

We so often use the words ‘Market’, ‘Marketing’ and rarely stop to think if this word is really from the English language. It’s very likely that ‘ Market ’ is borrowed from a South Indian language, Kannada during the British rule in India. Maaruva + Kaţţe = Maarukaţţe ‘Maaruva’ stands for selling ‘Kaţţe’ stands for a platform ‘Maarukaţţe’ – a place for buying and selling In Kannada, if people were to say I’m going to the market, they would call Market as ‘Maarukaţţe’. But in the recent past, we much rather hear people saying ‘Maarkeţţige’ (to the market) rather than ‘Maarukaţţege’. It’s like, the Kannada word gets added as a Loan word in English; and then again Kannada speakers use the English form of their word back in their language. BTW, if you have been wondering how to pronounce ‘ţ’ that I’ve been using for ‘Kaţţe’ Curl your tongue backwards to touch the soft palette and say T as in ‘eighT’. That’s called a ‘ Retroflex ’ sound. Now, getti
Post a Comment
Read more

Throw out of the Window - in one word - Defenestrate

Wish I had come across this word in the 1990’s when my cousin often threatened my little sister that he will throw her out of the window (kiddingly - the intention was to show her that she’s so small that she can be thrown out of the window, despite the little space between the window grills). So must be clear by now – the next time you want to tell someone – I’ll throw you out of the window – you can save yourself some words and instead say – I’ll defenestrate you :) Hey, it’s not just for throwing people out; you can even defenestrate things!!! ~ ~ ~
3 comments
Read more