damocles

1. 1.

   the Greek courtier to Dionysius the Elder who (according to legend) was condemned to sit under a naked sword that was suspended by a hair in order to demonstrate to him that being a king was not the happy state Damocles had said it was (4th century BC)

   Broadercourtier

Other forms of damocles

plural

damocleses·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about damocles

What does damocles mean?

damocles means "the Greek courtier to Dionysius the Elder who (according to legend) was condemned to sit under a naked sword that was suspended by a hair in order to demonstrate to him that being a king was not the happy state Damocles had said it was (4th century BC)".

How many syllables are in damocles?

damocles has 3 syllables: dam-o-cles. The stress falls on "dam". In IPA it is /ˈdæməˌkliz/.

Is damocles a common word?

damocles is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.