Achilles heel
or Achilles' heel
a portion, spot, area, or the like, that is especially or solely vulnerable: His Achilles heel is his quick temper.
Origin of Achilles heel
1Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use Achilles heel in a sentence
Our visionary scientists have found the Achilles heel of yet another enemy of the State—the Superbug!
Obama, extremely/quite confident: 32 percent Romney, extremely/quite confident: 19 percent That's the Achilles heel, gang.
It is already beyond repair in Yemen, the Achilles heel of Arabia where the police state has fractured and fallen apart.
Signatures will not be his Achilles heel—he knows well how the game is played in this city.
But it also represents the Achilles heel of a company that loves to look backward more than it does forward.
These countries are the “Achilles heel of the British Empire.”
German Problems and Personalities | Charles Sarolea
British Dictionary definitions for Achilles heel
a small but fatal weakness
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Cultural definitions for Achilles' heel
[ (uh-kil-eez) ]
A point of vulnerability. (See Achilles.)
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Other Idioms and Phrases with Achilles heel
A fatal weakness, a vulnerable area, as in This division, which is rarely profitable, is the company's Achilles' heel. The term alludes to the Greek legend about the heroic warrior Achilles whose mother tried to make him immortal by holding the infant by his heel and dipping him into the River Styx. Eventually he was killed by an arrow shot into his undipped heel. [c. 1800]
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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