Goliath
Americannoun
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(in the Bible) the giant warrior of the Philistines whom David killed with a stone from a sling.
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Usually goliath a giant.
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Usually goliath a very large, powerful, or influential person or thing.
a neighborhood grocery competing against the supermarket goliaths.
noun
Etymology
Origin of Goliath
Ultimately from Hebrew Gōlyāth, of uncertain origin
Explanation
Someone or something with an unusually large amount of strength is a goliath. Your soccer team might be nervous if you show up to a game and the other team's players are a bunch of goliaths. This adjective comes from the Biblical figure Goliath, who despite his greater size and strength was defeated by the young David. So while it's fine to use goliath to simply mean "giant" or "strong person," it's even more fitting for something supposedly strong and unbeatable that's actually vulnerable. You might challenge a goliath of a developer that's threatening to cut down the oldest maple tree in town — and, like David, you just might win.
Vocabulary lists containing goliath
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Resisting the attention economy isn’t a human vs. machine battle, but a David and Goliath one.
From Salon ● Jul. 13, 2026
"People keep saying it's David and Goliath because that really is just the best way to describe it," he said.
From BBC ● Jun. 30, 2026
Otherwise, public schools would be forced to leave children in ignorance of a large swath of the Western tradition: David and Goliath?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 21, 2026
“If you scroll back to ‘Game of Thrones’ in the first two seasons, it wasn’t a massive Goliath success, and it exploded after Season 3 with the Red Wedding.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 15, 2026
“I was fixin’ to preach about David and Goliath this morning, because David was young, and brave, and faced an enemy who seemed to be impossible to defeat.
From "Stella by Starlight" by Sharon M. Draper
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.
