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View synonyms for Achilles heel

Achilles heel

or Achilles' heel

noun

  1. a portion, spot, area, or the like, that is especially or solely vulnerable:

    His Achilles heel is his quick temper.



Achilles heel

noun

  1. 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


Achilles' heel

  1. A point of vulnerability. ( See Achilles .)


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Word History and Origins

Origin of Achilles heel1

First recorded in 1800–10
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Idioms and Phrases

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]
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Example Sentences

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.”

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from 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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