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n. - The Greek courtier to Dionysius the Elder who (according to legend) was condemned to sit under a naked sword that was suspended by a hair in order to demonstrate to him that being a king was not the happy state he had said it was;

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Usage examples (37)
  • The model, called Damocles as in “sword of”, is an early-warning signal.
  • I think it was called Damocles and involved B52 raids against Baghdad and Tehran.
  • The picture, by the way, is from a source aptly called Damocles, which processes data on Arctic melting.
  • Under such sword, the conviction being that Humanity is as 'Damocles'?
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We give special thanks to our LearnThat volunteers, as well as Princeton University and Wiktionary for their Open Source word data. We're also grateful for the support given by Google, Wordnik.com, Dictionary.com, Stands4.com and YouTube, OEDILF.com, Kylescholz.com, Best-Practice.com, Forvo.com, as well as the generous Creative Commons community.