Saturday 24 November 2012

Achilles heel=كعب أخيل


Achilles heel=كعب أخيل
Achilles
Greek hero of the Trojan War stories, son of Thetis and Peleus, his name is perhaps a compound of akhos "pain, grief" (see awe) + laos "the people, a people" (see lay (adj.)); or else it is from a pre-Greek language.


Achilles tendon
from Mod.L. tendo Achillis, first used by German surgeon Heister and so-called in reference to the one vulnerable spot of the great Greek hero Achilles, whose mother held him by the heel when she dipped him in the River Styx to render him invulnerable (though this story is not in Homer and not found before 1c. C.E.). Earlier Achilles' sinew, from Mod.L. chorda Achillis, coined 1693 by Dutch anatomist Philip Verheyden when dissecting his own amputated leg. Hence figurative use of heel of Achillies for "vulnerable spot" (1810).

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