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• sword of Damocles
  sword of Damocles

  noun

  any situation threatening imminent harm or disaster.
• Sword of Damocles
  Sword of Damocles

  noun

  a closely impending disaster

sword of Damocles

American  

noun

1. any situation threatening imminent harm or disaster.

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Sword of Damocles British  

noun

1. a closely impending disaster

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sword of Damocles Idioms  

1. Also, Damocles' sword. Impending disaster, as in The likelihood of lay-offs has been a sword of Damocles over the department for months. This expression alludes to the legend of Damocles, a servile courtier to King Dionysius I of Syracuse. The king, weary of Damocles' obsequious flattery, invited him to a banquet and seated him under a sword hung by a single hair, so as to point out to him the precariousness of his position. The idiom was first recorded in 1747. The same story gave rise to the expression hang by a thread.

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Etymology

Origin of sword of Damocles

First recorded in 1810–20

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

sword of Damocles Sword of Damocles

But even then, the rare earths situation could stay unresolved, “hanging like a sword of Damocles over many companies’ heads,” Gave says.

From Barron's ● Oct. 21, 2025

She described it as a "sword of Damocles over my head for three long years".

From BBC ● Dec. 22, 2024

Ryan Dunn’s murky lighting design shores up that sense of stagnation, as does an intermittent low drone oh-so-quietly underpinning the proceedings, like an aural sword of Damocles, courtesy of sound designer Matt Starritt.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 15, 2024

The tragic message of Oppenheimer and “Oppenheimer” is that humankind has lived under a nuclear sword of Damocles ever since.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2023

We know what sword of Damocles hangs over his head—an electric razor for the military school crewcut Mundín would have to get.

From "How the García Girls Lost Their Accents" by Julia Alvarez

Companies hope the trade disputes will settle down, but tariffs hang over the economy like the Sword of Damocles.

From MarketWatch ● Dec. 16, 2025

After more than a year, the Maryland bar dismissed the charges; the D.C. bar charges remained a Sword of Damocles over my head for another eight years, rendering me both unemployed and unemployable.

From Salon ● Jul. 17, 2025

Because that conviction hangs over her head like the Sword of Damocles — making it hard to get on with her life and always, somehow, bringing more instability and pain to her, and to Summer.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 24, 2022

This time it centred on all those players on yellow cards and the Sword of Damocles that hung over them.

From BBC ● Nov. 16, 2021

He felt instinctively that the Sword of Damocles, which had been suspended for so long above his head, was at last about to fall.

From Held by Chinese Brigands by Strang, Herbert